Darth Cheney Attempts To Alter Federal Government Structure

I grabbed the above picture from Firedoglake, the very cool progressive blog which has been rivalling DailyKos.com as the center of the libral blogosphere.

The picture refers to the story that broke this week that Vice President Dick "Darth" Cheney has been making the claim that his office is not a member of the Executive Branch of the Federeal Government, because the Vice President of the United States also serves as President of the Unites States Senate, and the Senate is a member of the Legislative Branch.

Most scholars, bloggers and other observers have responded to the Vice President's claim with disbelief, surprise and humor. It should be noted that Vice President Cheney previously won a United States Supreme Court ruling declaring that he could assert "executive privilege" in defying a subpoena to present documents on the membership of a White House Task Force on Energy convened by the Vice President in Bush's first term.

However, Congressman Rahm Emmanuel has had the best idea of how to respond to Cheney's claim that he is (and is not) "an entity of the Executive Branch": use Congress' power to remove funding to the Office of the Vice President until Cheney declares which branch of government he belongs to. If he's not in the Executive Branch, he shouldn't receive its funds.