Most criminals commit their crimes in the middle of the night. That way, no one can see them and they can get away with it. But if you're real good at it, you can commit the crimes in broad daylight, and smile in the security cameras.

Back in the 1990's, when Bill Clinton was under fire over his extra-curricular sexual activity, he tried to commit a crime in broad daylight, but he got caught and we are still making fun of him today. He testified under oath as follows: "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If 'is' means 'is and never has been' that's one thing - if it means 'there is none', that was a completely true statement."

Yeah, that was pretty slippery. But everyone knows that sex addicts like Clinton will lie and prevaricate about sex. The only real victim in the Monica Lewinsky scandal was Hillary Clinton.

The Monica-Clinton follies seem quaint today when the current administration has totally fouled up every policy initiative available to them and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war of choice against a country that never attacked us or threatened us. Political observers widely believe that Vice President Cheney is the brains behind the White House, particularly since George W. Bush does not have the intellegence or the curiosity to make decisions on his own. A Clinton-like word-game unfolded last week which makes the Clinton-era scandals look meaningless and the Bush administration look like the venal shysters that we have always known them to be.

The story begins with efforts by the National Archives to obtain Bush administration records out of the Vice President's office. The National Archives is a part of the Executive Branch, which is the presidential arm of U.S. government. (The other two branches, for those of you who snoozed through social studies or civics class, are the Legislative Branch -- Congress -- and the Judicial Branch -- the Courts). Dick Cheney did not want to produce the records, presumably because they contain embarassing information that would not look good in the newspaper (why else would he hold onto these records?).

Cheney is so focused on withholding government records from public oversight that he wants to shut down the National Archives. The New York Times reports, "For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of his office’s handling of classified information, and when the National Archives unit that monitors classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president’s office suggested abolishing the oversight unit, according to documents released yesterday by a Democratic congressman."

Shutting down an entire government agency to avoid having to produce public records is like carpet-bombing a village because some bad guys might be hiding out there. But the story gets better. Cheney's people are suggesting that an Executive Order that requires people in the Bush administration to produce records for public oversight does not apply to Dick Cheney, the Vice President. According to the New York Times: "officials familiar with Mr. Cheney’s view said that he and his legal adviser, David S. Addington, did not believe that the executive order applied to the vice president’s office because it had a legislative as well as an executive status in the Constitution."

This is insane. As Vice President, Dick Cheney is part of the Executive Branch. What the sleazy advisors in the Bush administration are saying is that since Cheney also technically presides over the U.S. Senate (the Legislative Branch), he is not truly a part of the Executive Branch. At a press conference last week, the hapless spokeswoman for the corrupt Bush regime had to fend off hostile questions from the media. Here is a partial transcript:

Q: What do you make of what congressman Waxman referred to as “absurd,” which was the Vice President’s contention that his office is not part of the executive branch?

PERINO: What I think, as I said, I think that is an interesting constitutional question that people can debate. What I think is absurd is —

Q: Would you agree with his contention?

PERINO: What I think is absurd –

Q: Hang on a second. Do you agree with his contention?

PERINO: What I think is absurd is Chairman Waxman asserting some sort of authority over the president in regarding [sic] an executive order, of which he is the sole enforcer.

Q: Would you agree with the contention that the office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch?

PERINO: What I know — and I am not a lawyer and this is an interesting legal question that legal scholars can debate and I’m sure you’ll find plenty of them inside the Beltway — is that the Vice President has a unique role in our United States government. He is not only the Vice President of the United States, but in that role he is also the President of the Senate. I will go ahead, I will let that debate be held, but what I’m answering questions on, in regards to this morning, is Chairman Waxman’s accusations about this small provision and going back and reading the E.O. and realizing that the President did not intend to have the Vice President treated any differently than himself, and remembering that the executive order is enforced solely by the president of the United States. I think this is a little bit of a non-issue.

Folks, this is very sick. It's as if the Bush administration is saying that we don't have three branches of government, we have four branches of government: the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch and the Cheney Branch.

But it gets even better! According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush says he is not covered by the Executive Order requiring the Executive Branch (that's the President and Vice President) to comply with requests for public documents.

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

This means that the President and Vice President do not have to comply with an Executive Order issued by the President. Which means the Executive Order has the value of a roll of toilet paper. The Bush administration is not commiting crimes in the middle of the night. They are doing it brazenly, right in front of the security cameras. It's like trying to hold up a police station. Why rob a liquor store in the middle of the night when you can rob the police?

More commentary on this outrage here. How much longer do we have to put up with this shit? And, more important, who's buying this shit?