Reply #148: Apparently, names of participants were released. . .

[Lena inRI]

. . .and Cheney's role was confirmed as behind-the-scenes but in full control yet I think Cheney still has an appeal out there.

See if you can figure out the legalese at this link about the released documents from this task force of 2001:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2099569/

Here's where I'm not sure if an appeal is still pending even though a final commission report was released already (link to it in above article link):

"When Cheney was ordered to produce the rosters and minutes of these meetings as part of pretrial discovery, he appealed that order all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court."

"So, how do you get to the Supreme Court? Mandamus, mandamus, mandamus. The government leapfrogged over the usual procedures and filed for extraordinary relief--in the form of a writ of mandamus--in the appeals court. And when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied that writ, noting that the case needed to be fully decided in the lower court first, Cheney took the up elevator to the Supreme Court instead of the down elevator back to the trial court."

"This becomes one of the key issues in Cheney v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (That's right, he's named the lower court as his opponent.) It's a bedrock legal principle that courts of appeals don't decide issues over which they have no jurisdiction, and that courts of appeals don't decide cases when there has been no final decision from a lower court, unless there's a pretty good reason."

I like what Paul Krugman had to say about secretive Cheney:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/opinion/27KRUG.html

"As Linda Greenhouse recently pointed out in The New York Times, the legal arguments the administration is making for the secrecy of the energy task force are 'strikingly similar' to those it makes for its right to detain, without trial, anyone it deems an enemy combatant."

"What Mr. Cheney is defending, in other words, is a doctrine that makes the United States a sort of elected dictatorship: a system in which the president, once in office, can do whatever he likes, and isn't obliged to consult or inform either Congress or the public."

Whatever, all the above confirms my belief that Cheney is the keystone holding up all the Six Dimensions of Bush Scandals.