CHENEY & THE RULE OF LAW

In his book Broken Government, John W. Dean tells us that Cheney has been an advocate of an imperial presidency (AKA, unitary executive) for decades. Cheney was the ranking minority member of the committees investigating Iran-Contra and the Minority Report is a lame attempt to clear Raygun & his Administration of violating the laws of the land. This is from page 437:

The bottom line, however, is that the mistakes of the Iran-Contra Affair were just that - mistakes in judgment, and nothing more. There was no constitutional crisis, no systematic respect for "the rule of law," no grand conspiracy, and no Administration-wide dishonesty or coverup.

In an op-ed in the NY Times on 7/9/2007, Sean Wilentz provides a little background information that shows another part of the great GOP Subversion Machine:

At the conclusion of the hearings, a dissenting minority report codified these views. The report’s chief author was a former resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael J. Malbin, who was chosen by Mr. Cheney as a member of the committee’s minority staff. Another member of the minority’s legal staff, David S. Addington, is now the vice president’s chief of staff.

PBS has a nice selection of Cheney's statements about (unbridled) Executive War-making Powers and here's Cheney on Gulf I:

SEC. CHENEY: Senator, I do not believe the President requires any additional authorization from the Congress before committing US forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf.

According to Cheney's view of the rule of law, the President can put almost 500,000 American forces in harm's way without any authorization!