Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday that the Senate doesn’t work for Barack Obama.

Reid, who lambasted the GOP-led Congress for being a rubber stamp for President Bush, indicated that he will not bow to the Obama administration.

Reid stated, “I don’t believe in the executive power trumping everything… I believe in our Constitution, three separate but equal branches of government.”

“If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him. … I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him,” he said.

In December, Vice President Dick Cheney said President-elect Obama will “appreciate” the expansion of the executive branch’s power over the last eight years. During an interview on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, Cheney predicted that Obama will not cede that authority back to Congress.

While Cheney has been a regular at the Senate GOP policy lunches over the past eight years, Reid recently said Vice President-elect Biden will not be allowed to sit in while Democrats discuss legislative strategies over lunch. The move is part of Reid’s attempt to separate the executive and legislative branches, which moved in unison between 2001 and 2006.

This is as it should be, and I hope Reid means it. That said, he and Nancy Pelosi are not the strongest leaders Congress ever had, and I don’t expect them to rebel all that much. My greatest hope is that Barack Obama appreciates the separation of power also and doesn’t try to trample all over them the way the Bushies did.

Meanwhile, demonstrating an “utterly cavalier lack of knowledge about the actual principles on which the country was founded” (Michael Tomasky’s description of Sarah Palin), MacRanger jeers at Reid for “pissing Obama off.” Stupid is as stupid blogs.

You regulars may talk among yourselves, unmolested, I hope.