Not in the executive branch, eh?
 

Senate panel says no cash for Cheney.

If you're not a part of the branch, why should you get funding designated for the branch? Seems logical enough.

PWNED!

Sounds fair to me, just reward for rank stupidity.

Though what role congress has in enforcing an executive order controlling the operations of the executive branch I'm not sure I understand.

The whole things still seems silly. All Bush needs to do is pull the executive order out of his filing cabinet, grab the good pen and scribble down at the bottom: "unless I say it is ok not to." Then it all goes away.

Not to be on one side or the other (though this did give me a bit of a smile), um... I know it's historical, but maybe that's why the budgets have been so notoriously out of control. Weren't the branches supposed to be adversarial? You know, the whole Judeo-Christian thing?

Huh???

Um, I do not thin that mins what you thin that mins.

While that might put him currently in compliance, it wouldn't change the fact that he has already refused to comply with an executive order.

Yes, but I still don't see what role Congress has in enforcing executive orders.

The "not part of the executive branch" idea is still really stupid.

Congress's role is to be a check and balance on the executive by virtue of its hand on the pursestrings.

This may be an odd route not strictly by the book, and it may very well be setting a bad precedent for future relations between those two branches ... but I believe it's broadly what Congress is supposed to do to keep the administration in line.

(And the precedent the executive branch has set and is setting can hardly be worse for future relations with Congress, so who cares what Durbin does at this point??)

By Judeo-Christian, I'm referring to the Judeo-Christian ethic of "good vs. evil," or rather, "us vs. The Devil," the adversarial, religious underpinnings of our legal system. In essence, I had always thought that the same concept applied toward the different branches of our government in the whole checks and balances thing. I didn't realize that Checks and Balances was more "Oh, sure I'll sign off on your budget."

The Judeo-Christian reference I made is not likely what people think of when talking about law. I spent about a third of the business law class I'm taking a final on tomorrow talking about "in what ways does the Judeo-Christian ethic affect laws and how they're applied" which was more than just the adversarial stuff.

While the branches of government provide checks against each other they are not designed to be adversarial. The goal, after all is to reach a consensus.

The courtroom is adversarial but then the two tables aren't expected, at the end of the trial to come together and agree on which side won.