I haven't seen this elsewhere but someone I was talking to mentioned this and it was sufficiently disturbing I want to toss it out there to be considered.

In this morning's Times, they reported Bush has restarted the CIA secret interrogations. But last week he dropped an executive order saying no torture. Those two things are at complete odds with each other.

He also issued a directive to the Justice Department that they are not to press any Contempt of Congress proceedings if executive privilege has been requested. That cannot be anything the Republicans want in existence if the other party is in the White House.

He issued the new executive order on asset seizure, in complete violation of both the 4th and 5th amendments.

He has worked to turn the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican party.

He has worked to pack the Judiciary, with a fine example of his work in Judge Bates who dismissed the Plame case.

I can go on and on, but that should be sufficient for the conclusion.

These are not the actions of a person who expects to release power in 18 months. Especially not if the person who will assume the reins is a member of the opposition party, and all polling says it will be, in a landslide.

While I think Bush may be stupid enough to not see that far into the future, I don't see Cheney doing that, not unless there was already a plan to ensure that control would remain either in their hands or in the hands of someone they have hand picked to take over. The national lottery we call elections is no where near a secure enough mechanism to deal with that problem.

Something with what they're doing doesn't add up.