Master of the Senate

Is it too much to ask that  our candidates have  read the Constitution?  You can't really display a greater ignorance of the Constitution than to state like Sarah Palin did that the Vice President is master of the Senate.  Clueless.  The Vice President is ceremonial president of the Senate and can only vote as a tiebreaker.  The Senate is not merely an appendage of the executive branch.  There is something disturbing about this basic failure to understand the separation of powers at the foundation of our republic.  Does she think Senator McCain answers to Dick Cheney?  Has no one yet explained to her the functions of the Vice President since July when she stated she didn't know what the Vice President did?  I thought she was a quick study?  Then why does she still not know the job description she's running for?  I think the Constitution should be amended to require all candidates for federal office to have read the Constitution in order to run.

Everything You Know is Wrong! The Vice President is Not Part of the Executive!

Vice President Richard ("Dick") Cheney maintains that the Vice President is not part of the executive branch.  This is a bizarre claim never before made in the almost 220 years of our Republic's existence, and one has to wonder how an alleged originalist such as Dick can make it with a straight face.  It certainly doesn't pass the laugh test, but one's laughter fades into melancholy as you realize that this is just another manifestation of the rampant constitutional revisionism that has served this administration's need to coat their often questionable actions in a veneer of legalist rhetoric.

The purpose of the argument is clear.  Dick doesn't want anyone to know dick.  The bad faith argument's purpose is to shield his papers from public scrutiny via the Presidential Records Act, which provides for public access to executive branch records with certain reasonable restrictions for national security and the like.  The basis for his argument, however, is only clear in its asininity.

Dick maintains that because of his constitutional role as President of the Senate, he is actually an appendage of the legislative branch. Granted, he is President of the Senate (a largely ceremonial position) and the Senate does pay his salary and that of most of his staff.  And he does get to vote in the Senate when there's a tie. See U.S. Const. Art. 1, cl. 4 & 5.  But why, if as a matter of originalism the framers thought of the Vice President as a creature of the legislature and not the executive, did they provide for his election alongside the President and not the Senate?  Why, originally, did the winner of the most electoral votes become President and the runner up become Vice President? See U.S. Const. Art. II.  Is Dick maintaining that originally Presidential candidates were running for an executive branch position with a legislative branch position as a consolation prize?  Does Dick seriously think the framers and ratifiers thought of the Vice President as a special legislative officer who just happened to be elected in the same way as the President and serve the same term as the President?  No, he doesn't, he's just doing anything he can to avoid public scrutiny of his public office.  Being President of the Senate no more removes the Vice President from the executive branch than the power of the President to veto legislation makes the President a legislator.