US Constitution, Article II, section 1...
Congress may be Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until...a President shall be elected.
Section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
That concludes every mention I can find in the main body of the Constitution as relates to the duties and office of the Vice President (section pertaining to election omitted.) Nor do any of the subsequent Amendments duly ratified clarify the matter of duties.
Whatever the fuck they are, Cheney has exceeded them. The proverbial "bucket of warm spit" (or "warm shit" depending on which version of the story you hold to) would be an improvement in every way over the current holder of the office. Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first-term vice president, asked to resign the office as he felt utterly frustrated at being able to contribute nothing to the war effort. When Lincoln implored him not to do this at such an unstable time, Hamlin shrugged and went back to Maine anyway to assist with recruiting Federal troops. (It is said that his wife rather insisted he come home, as she refused to live in Washington and he, when away from her, did little but drink all day.)
Hannibal Hamlin would be an improvement over Cheney. He did not decide to "contribute to the war effort" by extralegal means, setting up a his own secretive, defensive and sometimes ruthless operation within the White House, nor did he engender quotes like
Cheney "is no novice in the art of bureaucratic warfare. He has long surrounded himself with impeccably loyal aides who both share his worldview of a powerful presidency unchecked by the legislative branch, and who have also installed like-minded allies throughout the government. Such allies provide crucial intelligence of inter-departmental debates, enabling Cheney to make end-runs around the bureaucracy and head off opposing views at key meetings. Call it Cheney's state within the state."
Time is virtually running out, even if there were the will for it, on impeachment of either the real president head of state or the titular one. In any case after these two are gone the problem will still remain: there is no effective legal restraint against a Vice President who abuses his power the way Cheney has.
The Vice President through all our history has had a role probably best compared to the First Lady. Look nice in pictures, attend tea parties and similar social rituals as a standin for the president who has more important things to do, go to funerals of national and international dead people of sufficient rank or celebrity, don't get caught on camera picking your nose, having sex, bathing in the blood of virgins, or other embarrasing actions. Show up in the Senate for tie votes and maybe run a pet project like the space program or reducing gang violence (How's that one comin' along, Laura?). Siddown, keep quiet, and wait for the Big Guy to croak.
Problem is there is nothing in the Constitution that I can find which explicitly prohibits the VP from taking over the fucking government. This turns out to be an oversight of a most lamentable degree by the Founders. So we need an amendment anyway. ("Amendment XXVII: Section 1: Don't be a Cheney dammit! Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.")
But why not go all the way and just abolish the fucking office? The VP has no assigned duties, we already established that. Idle hands are the Devil's playground, everybody knows that because our mothers told us so. Revoke the whole damn XXV Amendment and rewrite it thusly: Da Prez croaks all or partway, the next elected person in the order of succession as currently written, who is of the same political party as the President duly elected, shall assume the office of Acting President for the length of the disability or until the next election be held.
Here's what this would do: We keep the existing order (minus VP) of Speaker of the House then Prez Pro Tem of the Senate. But then we shitcan that whole list of successor out of the Cabinet because that should never have been there in the first place. None of those people were elected by anybody and should not be in a position to assume the top office.
Succession is limited to members of the same party as the President being replaced because that's what the voters said they wanted in that office, dammit. Also this eliminates the temptation to shoot, say, a Democratic president because he/she would be replaced by the head of the hypothetical Republican-held House. Or vice versa. No cheating to change the outcome of the election.
And yeah, this would all take a Constitutional amendment. So? Drastic times, drastic measures, and all that.
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You Missed a Spot
Article I, Section 3, Paragraph 4: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." Kind of significant.
Ahem, Mr. M., you missed this section evidently:
Wherein I tiraded:
Okay, I should have included 1/3/4 in the quote section. But I still don't think this is a show-stopper for the Abolition program. If the Senate has a tie the President herself can show up and break it. It's not like it happens all that often anyway even with the upper house as evenly (and precariously) divided as it is now.
Thanks for the correction though. We really do need to come up with some plan to reduce the chances of a malignant Vice Presidency from recurring though. I opened with a call for abolition to define what seems like the logical outer limit, the surgical option as it were. As with other malignancies it may turn out that other solutions are needed, or several of them in combination--defining restrictions on the VP's duties (chemo) or explicitly requiring that names of all visitors or contacts will be recorded and publicly available, transcripts of meetings kept on the public record etc (sunlight is a form of radiation isn't it? I like this metaphor and intend to beat it to death, fair warning.)
One thing that really set me off about this current asswipe was his current claim that he not only is covered by all the powers embodied in the term "executive privilege" but none of the few restrictions, principally that his actions be transparent and subject to public scrutiny. The undisclosed location shit must end.
This is the ultimate purpose of the whole Cheney-Bush administration and indeed every Republican of the last 40 years or so: the "right" of the Executive to reign untrammelled by any legislative or judicial restriction. The change from president to tyrant, from republic to empire.
Christ, even WaPo's Broder thinks this shit is gettin' a little out of hand:
blah blah blah. If you can get Broder to clutch his pearls and flutter his little hands in alarm you know the end times are almost here.
(Hey, i managed to mention the "end times" without any reference to the fact that Jon Benet Ramsey's father and Natalie Holloway's mother are now reported to be dating.) (Oops.)
Brilliant idea
When I read about Cheney's extra-Presidential machinations in re Iran and Israel, and China over Tiawan, I thought, isn't this the very definition of treason? And why is no one screaming about it?? Effin criminy people, Do something before he starts another conflagration in the ME or the Far east!
The ultimate in stupid ideas
You better take your bat and ball and go home because your idea is so ridiculous it boggles the mind.
Getting a Constitutional Amendment passed that eliminates an office the founders purposely included is virtually impossible.
Hyperbole is fine unless it is so far out that it totally loses touch with reality - your's fits squarely in the latter category.
No Congressman or Senator would introduce it and even if some loony-toon did, and it somehow survived to come to the floor, it would get only his vote.
Continue your rant about Cheney if you want but keep your mitts off the Constistution.
addition and amendment
As an addition, instead of your suggestion that a tie in the Senate could be broken by the President, why not add a usually non-voting Senator for DC, who, like DC's representative in the House, could speak but not vote, except that s/he could be there to break ties?
As an amendment, I'd suggest that we also abolish the office of the President and the Cabinet positions. This President (Bush 43) has not been the first, but is perhaps the most outrageous example of the potential for abuse and/or incompetence caused by placing so much power in the hands of one individual. There is an executive department for every function of the executive branch. Let Congress appoint, or the people elect, committees (or we might call them Secretariats) to manage each department, and one member of each Secretariat can be chosen to sit on a steering committee that would determine matters which concern the interrelation of two or more departments within the executive, but not have any power over matters entirely covered under a single department. The House would appoint each member, the Senate would confirm them, and the House would also have the power to recall them. There should also be an avenue for a popular recall, but perhaps just reconfiguring the way representatives are chosen to the House to make it more representative of the people would be sufficient.