July 25 (LPAC)-Some Republicans are "scheming to remove Mr. Dick Cheney...our imperial vice-president" before the 2008 elections, former Reagan Administration official and Constitutional Attorney Bruce Fein writes today in an opinion column in the Financial Times.

Fein also throws down the gauntlet to Congress, declaring it "too timid and constitutionally illiterate to be awakened to the need to impeach Mr. Cheney for his acts against the nation."

Fein's column opens by paraphrasing Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "Upon what meat doth this our vice-president, Dick Cheney, feed that he has grown so great?" Cheney has trampled the philosophy of the Founding Fathers, and used the law to evade the Constitution's checks and balances--even denying that he is in the Executive Branch, Fein writes.

The Constitution gives the vice-president "only one puny chore," says Fein: to preside over the Senate. Furthermore, Presidents have been characteristically "jealous to protect their turf," but Bush is "a monumental exception...who eagerly agreed" to Cheney's tacit demand for the lion's share of power.

"The Cheney doctrine of an unchecked presidency is now unravelling," Fein says, pointing to the Supreme Court's decision on military commissions and detention of enemy combatants; a similar Federal Appeals Court decision that resident aliens may not be detained indefinitely; Congressional subpoenas on NSA spying on U.S. citizens and the firing of U.S. Attorneys; the growing demands in Congress and the population to get out of Iraq; and, finally, Fein's assertion that some Republicans are scheming to remove Cheney.

Fein is the third former member of the Reagan Administration to warn against Cheney's coup against the Constitution and drive for war in the last two weeks. Former Reagan speechwriter Patrick Buchanan warned of a "Gulf of Tonkin" incident triggering an attack on Iran. Former Reagan Treasury official Paul Craig Roberts warned of "a new 9/11" incident being staged in the U.S. to keep Cheney and his facist doctrine in power through 2008 and beyond. Fein concludes, "The events of September 11, 2001 are still distorting the judgments of many Americans and office-holders."