Catch-Up

Power Hungry:

This is what we've bought for ourselves:

The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.

The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

I need to check for the exact wording, but as I recall, the duties and responsibilities of the Executive under the Constitution do not include interpreting the laws. That is reserved for the courts.

Anyone have a take on this?

On Leave:

Given the sad spiral down in the news and the blogsphere lately, I'm thinking of taking some time off from Hunter at Random. If you want to know some of the reasons, check this piece of moronic trash (or anything else at Townhall), this piece from Andrew Sullivan on Joseph Niclosi, who should be behind bars, for life, no parole, and Fred Barnes, for whom maybe jail is too good; and this insanely blind piece on the Bush AIDS policy in Africa from Mr. Ivory Tower himself. (I honestly don't understand how Sullivan can go from praising Bush's AIDS policy to justly condemning the likes of Nicolosi and Barnes without a blip. Oh, well -- he does note in another post that he suffers from a certain degree of cognitivie dissonance. Apparently, he still isn't sure how pervasive it is.) Add in this comment from John Aravosis at AmericaBlog. I think he's really put his finger on a major problem with the MSM -- they don't want to deal with issues.

However, please note that there's always a light side, as witness this story about Roy Moore. (I promise you, this is not The Onion -- this is an actual news story.)

See ya -- after a little R&R.