A short follow-up on this question of the vice president's alleged power to declassify. In this post, Steven Aftergood, who knows a lot about these things, says that the vice president probably doesn't have this authority, except in cases where he or his office did the original classification.

However, several TPM lawyer-readers tell me that is probably too narrow a reading of the order and that Cheney probably does have the authority, or at least a colorable claim to it.

We'll bring you more as we learn more.