Vice Presidency in the Legislative Branch for Purposes of Executive Oversight, OVP Claims: The Onion reports that the Office of the Vice-President is refusing to comply with executive oversight rules on the theory that for purposes of executive oversight, the Office of the Vice President is actually part of Congress:

  For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of his office's handling of classified information, and when the office in charge of overseeing classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president's office suggested that the oversight office be shut down, according to documents released today by a Democratic congressman.
  [O]fficials familiar with Mr. Cheney's view said that he and his legal adviser, David S. Addington do not believe the executive order applies to the vice president's office because it has a legislative as well as an executive status in the Constitution. . . .
  . . . Mr. Addington stated in conversations that the vice president's office was not an "entity within the executive branch" because, under the Constitution, the vice president also plays a role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, able to cast a vote in the event of a tie.

  UPDATE: My apologies -- this story is not in The Onion, but rather the New York Times. I regret the error.

Wash Post Profiles Influential Legislator: Today's Washington Post kicks off a series on Senate President Dick Cheney, who apparently has also exercised some influence in recent years within the Executive Branch. The first installment is here.

  UPDATE: The Washington Post article really is a must-read, although on reading it closely I realize that the title of my post is inaccurate. According to the Post article, Cheney's counsel believes that the Vice-Presidency is neither in the executive branch nor in the legisltive branch. Last I checked, the federal government only had three branches, so by process of elimination the Office of the Vice President must be in the judicial branch.