Dick Cheney

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Henry Waxman wants to look into the Valerie Plame outing, citing a disclosure Scooter Libby made to the FBI in which Libby indicated to investigators that he may have been instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney to out Plame. Waxman wants the FBI to turn over records of an interview they conducted with Cheney during the course of the investigation that ended with the conviction Libby for perjury and the subsequent commutation of his sentence by President Bush.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Waxman said that recent revelations from Scott McClellan represent a breach of trust. In an interview with the Today Show last week, McClellan said the President admitted to McClellan that he authorized the leak of Plame's identity. In his book McClellan says Bush and Cheney "directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby."

Do not expect Mukasey to comply with Waxman's request for documents. Still, the move works for Waxman politically because he can continue to put pressure on the Bush administration at a time when the Plame outing is being re-examined in light of McClellan's book. If the administration blocks Waxman from getting the records he wants, he can argue that once again the're politicizing justice.

Vice President (R-Obnoxious) needed to apologize to the entire population of West Virginia today after some impolitic remarks made to the National Press Club on Monday.

Via the AP/AOL News:

Talking about his family roots and how he's distantly related to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the vice president noted that he had Cheneys on both sides of his family.

"And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney quipped.

"You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

Yeah, you can, Dick. And you can contribute to the enduring legacy of this administration and assist in turning West Virginia blue again. Thanks, we'll take it.

Reaction from West Virginians - both Democrat and Republican - was swift:

Not too long ago, Political Machine had a Hollywood moment, featuring an early preview of Oliver Stone's 'W' script and an analysis on why the director is rushing to get the film done before the November vote.

At the time, details about the film were scant. We knew Josh Brolin would be playing the President, Elizabeth Banks would be playing the First Lady and that Ellen Burstyn would be taking on the Barbara Bush role, but little else.

Now, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we have a few more details on the movie, which is still in the pre-production stage (location scouting, casting, procuring Fiji water). However, among the many interesting things we've learned, we now know that Stone has had a hard time getting big-time actors to sign-on to play the Bush Administration's heavy hitters (Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld).

''You'd be amazed how many male stars of a certain age in Hollywood are Republicans,'' says Bill Block, CEO of QED, one of the producers for 'W'. ''I'm not going to name names, but a lot of them just didn't want to have anything to do with it.''

So, how did Oliver Stone convince rising star Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) to take on such a controversial role? He appealed to the actor's intelligence, naturally. ''When Oliver approached me about George Bush my initial reaction was 'Why would I want to do that?' But Oliver pointed out certain simi¬larities I had with the character. We both have well-known fathers. We both grew up in the country. We both have strong mothers.''

If that wasn't bad enough, Brolin is driving his wife "crazy" trying to imitate Dubya's Texas/Connecticut drawl. ''I'm talking to myself all day long,'' Brolin says.

B. Brandon Barker is the author of the novel Operation EMU.

The Associated Press reports that top officials in the Bush Administration met regularly in the White House to discuss and authorize various harsh interrogation methods in the years after the September 11th attacks. A former senior intelligence official told the AP that the meetings among so-called "principles" in the Administration took place in the White House Situation room and involved Vice-President Cheney, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former CIA director George Tenet, and then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. President Bush was not involved in any of the meetings at which enhanced interrogation methods were discussed.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) released a statement upon learning of the reports, saying, "Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?" But that misses the most revealing aspect of this information. It has been widely known that the Administration ordered the use of enhanced interrogation techniques against terrorist detainees. What has not been known until now was the length Administration officials, including the Vice-President, went to investigate certain interrogation methods, and to protect the President from the potential consequences of those decisions. According to the reports, the group discussed, received legal advice on, and approved methods including waterboarding, all without the president's participation.

Here's question you're not asked everyday: What is that odd image being reflected in Dick Cheney's sunglasses?



The photo comes to us from the Cheney's Facebook page, er, from the White House website, and its caption reads:

Vice President Dick Cheney spends an afternoon fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.

Conspiracy theorists are having a field day trying to figure out exactly how much clothing this figure may or may not have on. Lynne, is that you? Here's the image blown up a bit.



In the interest of saving democracy as we know it, and given that it's a slow news day, we've decided to conduct a Rorschach poll. Tell us what you see. After the jump, you can read the official explanation. Yeah, right, like anybody is really going to believe that.

According to a report in The Washington Post the secret service plans to continue providing "agents, transportation, advance work and other security-related trappings of executive power for six months after the Bush administration packs up and moves out in January" at a cost of $4 million. Protection of some kind will likely continue indefinitely.

Though other vice presidents have received some level of protection, federal law only calls for protection of the vice president and his immediate family while in office. President Bush will receive protection for 10 years after leaving office.

The report did not imply that the extra protection being prepared had anything to do with Cheney's unpopularity, but rather quoted a former Secret Service special agent who attributed the measure to being at war with "an enemy who has sworn to destroy this country."

"And notice this, my friends: W. doesn't speak while Chaney's drinkin' water!" Thus spake Robin Williams on the relationship of the Pres and VP - a topic taken up by the President's #2 during a break in his Middle East tour.

There can be little doubt that Dick Cheney has contributed to the modern re-casting of the Office of the Vice-Presidency. The first American VP, John Adams, described his station as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." A century a half later, FDR's VP, "Cactus Jack" Garner, concurred by valuing the office as "not worth a pitcher of warm piss."

Yet, while modern VP's have come unto their own, wielding significant power and influence, Cheney has become the personification to many liberals of the archetypal evil-genius. The irrational animosity may simply be an extension of Bush-Derangement-Syndrome (liberals also cast Karl Rove as an evil-genius, simply because be can decipher demographics and had a strong candidate). Perhaps, given the crop of candidates with which the Democrats have been served in elections past, they simply have not been exposed to either genius or effectiveness - and predictably fear what they do not understand.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war Vice President Dick Cheney sat down with ABC's Martha Raddatz and said, yet again, that he just doesn't care what the American people think. (h/t ThinkProgress)

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there's a general consensus that we've made major progress, that the surge has worked. That's been a major success.

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it's not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don't care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Unfortunately, that figure is not just a "fluctuation." The majority of Americans have not been in favor of this war since June of '05. As of today:

U.S. Fatalities: 3,990
U.S. Casualties: 40,229
Cost: $504,000,000,000.00

Just hours after the media broke news of John McCain's unannounced visit to Iraq, we now have word that Vice-President Dick Cheney has arrived in Baghdad for a surprise visit.

Cheney's unscheduled visit will act as the prologue of a nine-day tour of the Middle East. The VP is expected to call upon the governments of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey.

While the vice-president's arrival obviously commemorates the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, there are other looming milestones upon which the administration is surely cognizant. Gen. Petraeus, for example, will deliver another heavily covered progress report to Congress in April. And the UN mandate for the Iraq war expires at the end of this year. The administration is beginning to set the stage for hostile debates on the war both on the home front and abroad.

On Thursday, White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters that there is no evidence that any White House e-mails from 2003 through 2005 are missing. In response, on Friday, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Henry Waxman, released the summary of an internal study that shows the White House does not have archived e-mail messages for several offices, including the offices of President and Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005.

Harper's Magazine writer Scott Horton points out, "It will come as no surprise to most that the big offender is the men at the center of the most virulent scandals, and the missing email traffic relates just to those dates in which a federal prosecutor would have the most interest."

After the jump--A list of several important days for which Cheney's office is missing email and a look at some other troubles facing the Vice President.