Cheney instructs Bush to ignore legislature and judiciary

The second part in a four-part Washington Post series about Dick Cheney focused on the Vice President's role in formulating the legal strategy to justify harsh interrogation methods.  Unfortunately for the Administration, a number of court rulings last year determined that water-boarding and other cruel and humane interrogation practices were illegal.  To fight back, Cheney instructed Bush to just simply ignore the legislature and judiciary:

Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to beauthorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitlyforbidden. According to participants in the debate, the vice presidentstands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial andlegislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restatedCheney's argument that when courts and Congress "purport to" limit thecommander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutionalprerogative to disregard them.

Cheney is trying to further the Nixonian constitutional doctrine that the Executive Branch leads while the other two branches follow.  Of course, if the Executive Branch can just disregard the legislature and judiciary, you have to ask why the latter two should even exist?  Also, if the Executive Branch is the most powerful, then how come the framers put the Legislative Branch in Article I, and the Executive back in Article II?  Maybe the framers were warning us about monarchies.