The Washington Post’s latest installment of its special series on Vice President Dick Cheney continues to reveal both new info and confirm some allegations made over the years by critics.

The latest revelations, spelled out in the Post’s painstaking reportage:

(1)Cheney pushed the envelope on Presidential power. Bigtime.

(2) Cheney tinkered with the torture’s definition to allow more…ahem…aggressive interrogation and some…physical coercion..

(3) Cheney was a skillfull student — and practitioner — of how government works, bureaucratic power, and the ins and outs of administration infighting, someone who most assuredly set the tone and created a big chunk of the substance of some of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies.

The piece needs to be read in full, but here are a few excerpts about the Dick Cheney branch of the U.S. government:

Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden “torture” and permitted use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress — for both Cheney’s claims of executive supremacy and his unyielding defense of what he called “robust interrogation.”

But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view.

This is the emerging motif of the unfolding Cheney narrative, whether it emerges in newspaper reports or Congressional hearings: it is done secretly and, apparently, with few constraints.

“The Invisible Government” used to refer to the C.I.A.; now it more accurately refers to Cheney’s office (or, rather, branch of government).

The Post paints the portrait of a man who KNOWS how to use government…and KNOWS how to use, guard and accumulate power:

The vice president’s unseen victories attest to traits that are often ascribed to him but are hard to demonstrate from the public record: thoroughgoing secrecy, persistence of focus, tactical flexibility in service of rigid aims and close knowledge of the power map of government. On critical decisions for more than six years, Cheney has often controlled the pivot points — tipping the outcome when he could, engineering stalemate when he could not and reopening debates that rivals thought were resolved.

“Once he’s taken a position, I think that’s it,” said James A. Baker III, who has shared a hunting tent with Cheney more than once and worked with him under three presidents. “He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power.”

And then there’s this…which provides food for thought…at the end of the long piece:

Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to be authorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitly forbidden. According to participants in the debate, the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney’s argument that when courts and Congress “purport to” limit the commander in chief’s war making authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.

So, once again, it’s a view of the U.S. that considers the judicial and legislative branches as seemingly subordinate to an all powerful and super-dominant Presidency.

“Checks and balances? Doesn’t that refer to a Washington Mutual account?”

If Cheney advocates a return to water boarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.

“That’s just the vice president,” said Gerson, Bush’s longtime chief speech writer, referring to Cheney’s October remark that “a dunk in the water” for terrorists — a radio interviewer’s term — is “a no-brainer for me.”

Gerson added: “It’s principled. He’s deeply conscious that this is a dangerous world, and he wants this president and future presidents to be able to deal with that. He feels very strongly about these things, and it’s his great virtue and his weakness.”

Read it in its entirety.

Prediction: More than ever, Cheney is going to be a political albatross around his boss’ — and the Republican party’s — neck.

If there is no new controversy involving him, it’ll be a slow political bleed as independent voters and some Republicans continue to distance themselves from the administration.

But if there are some new, startling revelations, the administration could see Republicans frantically scrambling to show their independence from it as 2008 draws closer.

Meanwhile, it is now a GOOD NEWS STORY…so if there is more info out there, expect other news organizations besides the Post to begin running Cheney stories.

AND ELSEWHERE….
–Andrew Sullivan (whose comment in the last sentence below inspired us to hunt for a suitable graphic for this post):

His dedication to using the executive branch (which, natch, he isn’t in) to create a roving extra-legal wing of government, able to detain individuals indefinitely, and torture them, is well-documented. But I didn’t know he essentially spied on and intercepted White House staff to prevent the president getting alternative views…What a total tool Gonzales is. How mortifying to be revealed as someone who, under the guise of Office of Legal Counsel, is just a device for David Addington’s ventriloquism.

–The Huffington Post’s Aaron Shure writes about “The Cheney Coup”

–Secrecy Breeds Political Imbalance

–Hello, 911? I’d Like to Report a Crime

–How Cheney Freed Bush To Fight The War On Terror (WaPo Timeline)

–Sacramento Bee Editorial: Vice president: Neither fish nor fowl, but galling

–Time for Republicans to Choose: Bush-Cheney or America