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Take Your Paws off the Presidency!

Does the Bush administration have a secret succession order that bypasses Congress?

Suppose the worst happens, and the next terrorist attack hits Washington hard, taking out the president and the vice president. What happens next?

New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president "established a means of re-creating the executive branch." Reagan's order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes.

Does a similar order exist today? We aren't told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret "doomsday" exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out.

Sooooooooo. Let me get this straight, because it sure appears to me to be making the argument that Bush and Cheney might have some conspiracy going whereby the off themselves to keep control of the Executive Branch. You have got to read the whole article, not too long, which ends up with

In any event, it is time for Congress to find out. Even if Reagan's initial illegal order has been rescinded, Congress must deprive it of all value as a precedent. Lawmakers should pass legislation that expressly nullifies all secret orders, present and future, through which the president asserts the imperial privilege of naming his own successor. We must decisively repudiate these illegal moves before they explode in our faces.

Nutroots.