"Hume suggested that since this was obviously a national story, Cheney should have informed the national press and gotten the word out sooner. Cheney's reply: 'It isn't easy to do that. Are they going to take my word for what happened?'
Seriously? Cheney's story is that his own credibility is so poor that a statement from him would have been worthless? Is he really going to stick to that as his explanation?"
As Josh Marshall put it--it is as if Cheney is saying, "hey, I have covered up so much that there is no way the press would believe me now."
But the serious issue that came out of that interview with Faux is that Cheney believes that he has the legal authority to declassify material. He tells Hume that an executive order (that Sully notes was conveniently issued right before the Plame outing) gives him that right.
Sullivan has started referring to Bush as a king, since he seems to assert himself (and now Cheney) as above the law during a perpetual war. Again, and I feel silly for repeating the obvious, there is no way that my Christian conservative friends would have tolerated this from Clinton. No way.
Btw, this probably won't help Scooter. He was charged with lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice--not with leaking classified information. This won't change that. And there are many out there who are challenging the Veep's assertion--noting that the executive order in question probably gives him the right to classify and then declassify materials he classified but not blanket authority to declassify everything under the sun.
In either case, this stinks. Conservatives who fear the power of government should be writing letters. But they won't. They will look at Bush reading the Bible and just say to themselves, "isn't he a good godly man."
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