The secretary of defense under cover of the vice president's office,

This started from the very beginning when David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, was a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions,

the vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action.

I can only assume that, when the vice president of the United States lobbies the Congress on behalf of cruel and unusual punishment and the need to be able to do that in order to get information out of potential terrorists... that it's still going on.

Even a sitting president who has a vice president running for office doesn't have a great impact on the way the administration behaves. The goal of the next three years is to repair the president's popularity and resolve the situation in Iraq to some decent outcome. ... If Bush leaves office in January 2009 with Iraq in chaos, nothing else will matter.

The president, just as any other American, deserves a legal defense against personal lawsuits not related to his office, ... But the costs of that defense should be borne by him and not the taxpayer.