In today's "White House Briefing" [1] column,  Dan Froomkin asks "The Fourth Branch?" -- and provides a sampling of the reaction, the response and the commentary to what should be deemed an outrageous concept:

Peter Baker [2] writes in Saturday's Washington Post: "The White House defended Vice President Cheney yesterday in a dispute over his office's refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified information as Democrats and other critics assailed him for disregarding rules that others follow.

"White House spokeswoman Dana Perino [3] said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an 'entity within the executive branch.'

"'This is a little bit of a nonissue,' Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, 'because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should.'

"Democratic critics said Cheney is distorting the plain meaning of the executive order. 'Vice President Cheney is expanding the administration's policy on torture to include tortured logic,' said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). 'In the end, neither Mr. Cheney or his staff is above the law or the Constitution.'"

Josh Meyer [4] writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto "conceded that the lengthy directive, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, did not specifically exempt the president's or vice president's offices. Instead, it refers to 'agencies' as being subject to the requirements, which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. 'It does take a little bit of inference,' Fratto said.

Fratto apparently couldn't explain why Cheney's office followed the rules until 2003 -- or why the National Security Council, among other White House offices, complies to this day.

David Jackson [5] writes in USA Today: "If Vice President Cheney believes his office is not an 'entity within the executive branch,' then a House Democratic leader says taxpayers shouldn't have to finance his executive expenses."