From the Nixon-Frost Interview (via Throwing Things):
Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
Nixon: I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!
Frost: …I’m sorry?
From a recent interview with Dick Cheney (via Raw Story, emphasis mine):
SCHIEFFER: Do you believe that the president in time of war, that anything he does is legal?
CHENEY: I can’t say that anything he does is legal. I think we do and we have historic precedent of taking action that you wouldn’t take in peacetime but that you will take sometimes in war time in order to do the basic job that you sign up to when you take the oath of office which is to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. If you hark back in our history you can look at Abraham Lincoln who suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the middle of the Civil War.
SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that was legal.
CHENEY: Well, no. It certainly was in the sense he wasn’t impeached.
Quite the precedent, huh?
Tags: bob schieffer, david frost, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, illegal, impeachment, presidency, Richard Nixon
