BLOG | Posted 06/27/2007 @ 12:37pm
Feingold on Cheney: “I Think He’s Confused.”
Along with venerable West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd ?, Russ Feingold enjoys the relatively lonely distinction in the current Congress of having demonstrated something more than a passing familiarity with the Constitution that members swear an oath to support and defend.
So it is good, indeed, that the Wisconsin Democrat chairs the Constitution subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The fact that Feingold has actually read the nation's essential document prepares him to resolve questions such as the one raised in recent days by Dick Cheney about where the Office of the Vice President can be found in the three branches of the federal government.
Cheney claims he is a member of the legislative branch, at least for purposes of accountability.
Does Feingold think there is any argument whatsoever for Cheney's interpretation?
"Not really," says the Senate's chief overseer of all things Constitutional, stifling something akin to grin of a Cheshine Cat.
If Cheney's attempt to classify the vice president as a legislator – in order to avoid requirements that his office comply with requirements the National Archives' charting of the classification and declassification of important documents -- were to be accepted, Feingold says, "I would have to go back and reconsider some of my answers on the quizzes when I was in elementary school. I would worry about my third-grade test results if I somehow got it wrong when I expressed this bizarre notion that the vice president was a member of the executive branch."
But Feingold has no such worries. The senator earned honors at the University of Wisconsin for his commentaries on the history of the Constitution and then, after completing a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he burrowed deeper into Constitutional studies at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated with even more honors. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=208443