I recently saw a great movie about Vice-President Cheney called “Vice.” News junkies will see little about his political life they don’t already know. It detailed how he rose from Rumsfeld’s intern to being the most powerful man in our government.

The critical scenes showed how he became George W. Bush’s Vice-President. His previous years in Washington D.C. taught him how to be the vicious, manipulative person who managed our government for six years. How he kept “Junior” from running the country and knowing what was being done in his name for six years. When Bush figured it out he benched Cheney and fired or by-passed others in Cheney’s Cabal.

Cheney’s ability to do what he wanted comes from a far right wing theory that says Article II of the Constitution gives the President almost total power to do as he wants. It is called the Unified Executive Authority. Where, when and who came up with this theory I don’t know but it made Cheney the most powerful person since FDR. Cheney and his cabal falsified evidence to create public opinion for war and found a government lawyer named Woo to come up with a legal opinion making it permissible to “interrogate” captives with torture.

Many of the cabal are back in power in the Trump administration. One is John Bolton, Trump’s security advisor, who has some influence on him. Former Chief of Staff Kelly said he should not be judged on what he did but what he stopped from happening. Others have quit because they couldn’t break the law.

The President just said he has the Executive Authority to build the wall without Congressional approval. Both of the Supreme Court Judges he nominated before believe in greater presidential power than has been used prior to Trump. If the Supreme Court was asked for a judgment on presidential power, at least two would vote for the expanded use.

The founding fathers wrote the Constitution limiting the power of the President. They were afraid a President could be a king and they just got rid of a king. Congress limited the army to a maximum of 5,000 so the state militias could maintain their independence. It is the reason why the President is a civilian. The President has often talked of “His Generals” being loyal to him. Active and retired generals should be loyal to the country not the President. When they quit he said, “They didn’t do anything for me.”

Go see the movie and imagine any President with Unified Executive Authority.