The 40-page opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, in the suit brought by the General Accounting Office against Vice President Cheney*, ruled that the GAO, which conducts hundreds of investigations into government affairs each year, has no personal or institutional right to bring almost any suit. Analysts said this means the agency might face trouble in enforcing its requests for information from any federal department. [...]
The case was randomly assigned to Bates, who was appointed to the bench by President Bush last year. [...]
"[A] Republican judge has decided that, once in office, Bush and Cheney can operate in complete secrecy with no oversight by Congress," [Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)] said.
The score is Walking Cadaver 1, GAO 0. But keep your eye on Judicial Watch's lawsuit against the Cheney Energy Task Force.
*For the issues surrounding these events: "Wednesday, January 9, 2002 – The White House told Congress in a letter released yesterday that Vice President Cheney or his aides met six times with Enron Corp. representatives last year, including a session two months before the energy trading company made the largest corporate bankruptcy filing in American history. [...] One of the staff meetings occurred six days before Enron announced actions that reduced its shareholder equity by $1.2 billion.
"Cheney met for half an hour on April 17 with Kenneth L. Lay, Enron's chairman, according to a Jan. 3 letter by David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel. The letter was written in response to a Dec. 4 request by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, who released the correspondence." {link}
