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ALAN SIMPSON, (R) FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Cheney is a westerner. He's inoculated against B.S.
KING: Former Senator Alan Simpson is a Cheney friend, dating back to the 1960s, a student of both frontier and presidential history.
SIMPSON: Executive power has a lighter hand in peace and a heavier hand in war.
KING: By all accounts, including Mr. Cheney's, his zest for a strong presidency was born of his witness to a weak one, at Gerald Ford's side in the aftermath of Watergate.
SIMPSON: When he was 34 years old, he was the chief of staff of the president of the United States. So why wouldn't he be enamored for the rest of his days about the power of the presidency?
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The tactic is not new. The president's father challenged 232 laws over four years. President Clinton issued 140 signing statements in eight years. But this administration has used the practice nearly 800 times in six years.
PODESTA: Pre-dates 9/11, it was a plan to exalt and aggrandize the executive branch, the so-called unitary executive theory.
You kind of have to scratch your head a little bit and say that the model you set for yourself is to restore the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon.
SIMPSON: Give it up, being a tough guy. I mean, I don't agree with all he does, but I know that he's not out to destroy the United States of America and the Constitution and all of the things we cherish. I do know that.
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SIMPSON: Don't think the American people aren't a little bit pleased, as they sit in Cody, Wyoming, or Cincinnati, or L.A., that no one has gone into the restaurant and blown somebody up in there. And the perception, when you hear about the Patriot Act and wiretapping, is that these are just a bunch of sweet, little people that happened to be locked up by accident, and that's bullshit, pure bullshit.
KING: It is future presidents who are likely to pay for the constitutional tensions here at home.
The ARROGANCE of these thugs, they wipe their ass with the Constitution. I'm a lady but tonight I'd spit on them, all of them.
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