Originally posted by Tom Servo:
- when Biden gave everyone a civics lesson by reaffirming that the Vice President is, in fact, part of the executive branch. And that the current VP is a nightmare.
not necessarily true. . .
from instapundit:
"And, yes, the VP's legislative duties are in Article I. But that cuts precisely against the point that Biden was trying to make. Here's what Biden said: "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. . . . The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous." This is wong on multiple levels at once. Article I -- which deals with the legislative, not the Executive branch, says: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." The Vice President presides over the Senate by right, whenever he/she wants to, regardless of whether there's a tie vote.
What's more, Vice Presidents, until Spiro Agnew, got their offices and budgets from the Senate, not the Executive Branch. The legislative character of that office is traditional -- treating the VP as part of the Executive Branch, and a sort of junior co-President, is a recent and, to my mind, unwise innovation. That's discussed at more length in
this article from the Northwestern University Law Review."
now, there are two points to be made here- 1) whether or not cheney maliciously chose one branch over another at his convenience, which is not the point of this posting, but rather, 2) which branch the VP most appropriately belongs to, and that can be read as being part of the legislative branch. the constitution lays out three things for the VP and that's to be president of the senate, cast any tie-breaking votes in the senate and succeed the president should the president die in office, in other words, two legislative responsibilities. in this case, biden has his constitution wrong. again, i'm not arguing as to the merits of cheney as a VP, but as to biden's (mis)understanding of the role of the VP as layed out in the Constitution.
and no, i have no desire to get dragged back into a pissing contest on this stuff.
