by Frank James

Within the hour, Vice President Cheney is scheduled to sit down with Vice President-elect Biden at the Vice President's house at the Naval Observatory as part of the traditional courtesy the exiting administration extends to an incoming one.

The two men are old political pros who over the course of their careers have had plenty of tension-filled meetings and this one will probably be little different. Politicians can fake anything, even a pleasant chat.

On the other hand, Cheney did once tell one of Biden's Democratic Senate colleagues to perform an anatomically impossible feat. And as we all know by now, you're never sure what Biden is going to say but you can always be near certain he'll say too much.

Lynne Cheney and Jill Biden, their wives, will be there. So that should keep matters in check.

Ah, to be the proverbial fly on the wall.

by Mark Silva

"The good news is, it's going to be a short speech,'' Vice President Dick Cheney, suffering from laryngitis, told cadets of the Virginia Military Institute today.

Perhaps a record-setting short speech: Five minutes.

Cheney, who led the nationwide search for Dick Cheney when President Bush was looking for a running mate during his first campaign for the White House, promised today that the Bush-Cheney White House will hand off the place with a smooth transition: "As President Bush and I finish our terms of office, we will ensure smooth and graceful transition of power to President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden, as they take up the duty of protecting America.''

That job of protecting America came home in the most stunning way possible for the Bush administration, less than eight months in office.

"Seven years ago a war began with a heartless attack on innocent Americans, perpetrated by men who reject and despise every principle on which civilized life depends,'' Cheney told the cadets. "They reject every standard of moral conduct. They live not by a code, but by a cult of murder, suicide and death. They compose not a den of criminals, but a movement with global ambitions and a yearning to seize and use the deadliest technologies against us. They are a strategic threat to the United States. They continue to test us on many fronts, yet this nation remains resolute.

"In the struggle at hand, the stakes remain high, but I am confident of the outcome,'' Cheney said. "Those who hate America are no match for those who love America.''

The vice president, his spokeswoman said en route to the ceremony, was "battling laryngitis.'' Cheney flew to Roanoke and then traveled by motorcade to Lexington, Va., where a woman stood by her van clapping and waving an American flag. At the campus entrance, a man held up a white sign saying "Cheney and USA deserve a fair trial."

In this "MIlitary Appreciaton Day" appearance, the 1,350-member cadet corps marched onto the field as the VMI regimental band and a bagpipe unit played. The cadets wore grey coats, white pants, and black hats with tall black tassels. The bagpipe players wore red tartan kilts. At 10:48 am, the vice president walked to the podium as the VMI regimental band played ruffles and flourishes and a 19 gun salute boomed from 105 millimeter howitzers. The cadet corps was arrayed in five companies in front of the vice president.

Cheney apologized for his laryngitis at the start of the speech. As short as it was, a cadet fainted and was helped from the field by several other cadets. VMI officials say the cadet is recovering and did not require hospitalization.

After today's ceremony, Cheney was attending to another medical issue of his own - upon return to Andrews Air Force Base, he was stopping in at the Malcolm Grove Medical Center for X-rays of his knees for evaluation of what his office called "long standing knee arthritis.''

With thanks to Dave Cook of the Christian Science Monitor for meticulous pool reporting of the vice president's trip to VMI.

by Frank James

Vice President Cheney is headed back to the hospital after having his heart experience atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm which he has experienced before. It doesn't sound like an emergency though it has changed his schedule.

Here's the statement from the Veep's office:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Later this afternoon, the Vice President will visit George Washington University Hospital for an outpatient procedure to restore his normal rhythm.

Here's a story from the Tribune's Breaking News blog.

by Frank James

A few thoughts after looking at Sarah and Todd Palin's recent tax returns.

Their adjusted gross income of $166,080 for tax-year 2007 makes them better off than most Americans but that also puts them no higher than in the middle class even by Sen. Barack Obama's definition which appears to set the ceiling for middle class at around $250,000 per couple.

By Washington standards, it's not a lot of money. There are journalists in this town who make more than the governor's $125,000 salary. True, fewer with all the layoffs and buyouts in journalism but still a fair number.

The vice president's salary, $221,000, would definitely represent a significant boost to the Palin family's income. There's the free housing too. (Assuming she'd move here and not try and do the job from little ole Wasilla.)

What a contrast with Vice President Cheney's family which saw its multi-million dollar income fall dramatically when he became vice president.

Which leads to the next point. When was the last time a Republican vice presidential nominee had income that didn't place them in the wealthy category of American if not the super wealthy? You'd probably have to go pretty far back to find one.

I'm guessing, however, that going forward, the numbers on the Palin's future tax returns will get much larger. There's certainly a big book contract in her future.

And if she doesn't become vice president, she may be able to bank speaking fees which appear to be permitted to the governor and other Alaska officials under the state's statutes.

So chances are good that whatever happens on Election Day, the Palins will find themselves in a higher tax bracket next year.

by Mark Silva

By a margin of nearly two-to-one, Americans surveyed say the federal government is doing the right thing in intervening in the financial market credit crunch, and by a double-digit margin most voters say that Democrat Barack Obama is better-suited than Republican John McCain to deal with the crisis at hand.

In the first full look at the public's reaction to the bailout that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled over the weekend, 57 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center in Washington on Friday through Monday said the government was doing the right thing -- and just 30 percent called the intervention the wrong thing.

"Support for the administration's plan to bailout many of the nation's troubled financial institutions is largely bipartisan,'' Pew President Andrew Kohut reports.

The Sept. 19-22 survey of 1,003 adults also found that more voters view Obama as the presdential candidate best able to address the financial crisis :47 percent favoring Obama on that count, 35 percent McCain. Among independent voters, it's Obama 44, McCain 30 on that question.

For more on public attitudes toward the bailout and Obama and McCain, see the Pew Center poll.

by Mark Silva

Tough news for Dick Cheney - and word of interest to Todd Palin as well -- from the federal court in Washington, courtesy of our court-watching Countdown to Crawford friends.

The Bush administration has attempted to expand access for snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, after first President Nixon and then President Carter imposed limits on off-road vehicles in the national parks.

But now, as President Bush prepares to leave office, Countdown's Jim Gerstenzang reports on a Washington Post report, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has tossed a National Park Service plan crafted in 2007. It would have allowed 540 recreational snowmobiles and 83 snow coaches a day to enter Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway.

The Grand Tetons tower above Jackson Hole, where the soon-retiring Cheney maintains a secluded home deep in a heavily forested spread, Countdown notes.

The plan developed by the Bush administration "is arbitrary and capricious, unsupported by the record, and contrary to law," opined Sullivan, nominated to the federal court by President Clinton, after serving in District of Columbia superior and appeals courts to which he was named by Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. The plan "clearly elevates use over conservation of park resources and values and fails to articulate why the Plan's 'major adverse impacts' are 'necessary and appropriate to fulfill the purposes of the park.''

Appeal, vows Ed Klim, president of the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, telling the New York Times: "This is not the end of the issue.''

Gerstenzang notes that a certain "First Dude'' - Alaska's - also may be watching this court case. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's husband Todd, husband of the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee, is a champion snowmobile racer.

(Todd and Sarah Palin at the start of the Iron Dog snowmobile race in 2007. Al Grillo / Associated Press.)

by Laura Olson

Additional international support will be necessary to establish a lasting peace along the Georgian-Russian border, former Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Nino Burjanadze said Thursday.

Burjanadze spoke on the conflict at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney began his visit to Georgia's capital.

Her talk comes after an announcement Wednesday of $1 billion in U.S. aid to help Georgia rebuild its infrastructure.

by Mark Silva

Dick Cheney dropped in at the Georgian embassy in Washington to declare his "solidarity'' with the Georgian people.

Our colleague, Jim Gerstenzang, who is recording the closing days of the Bush administration at the L.A. Times' Countdown to Crawford, also drew pool duty for the vice president's embassy stop Monday, and he delivered this account:

"The vice president spent two minutes 20 seconds at the Georgian embassy at 2209 Massachusetts Avenue. He walked up the cement steps and was greeted in the foyer at 4:31 p.m. by Ambassador Vasil Sikharulidze; Maj. Malkhaz Jamureli, identified by the vice president's press office as the Defense, Military, Navy and Air Attaché, and Tamta Kupradze, identified as the Second Secretary at the embassy.

"Twenty seconds after he walked through the doorway, he sat down at a wooden table, took from his Navy blue coat a pen and blue note card, and began to write on a lined, cream-colored blank page of a leather-bound remembrance book.

"He looked at his note card three times as he wrote, writing, pausing to look at the card and then writing again. He spent 75 seconds at the task, talked for 45 seconds with the hosts, speaking so quietly that your pooler, perhaps five feet away, could catch only a few words, and then departed.''

(The ambassador could be heard saying: "Thank you very much for your support.")

The vice president wrote in large hand covering more than half of the page in the guest book: "To the people of Georgia...In this hour of sorrow I offer the respect, condolences and solidarity of the United States of America."

And beneath that: "Dick Cheney.''

by Johanna Neuman

Vice President Dick Cheney got carded.

Not for drinking, but for voting.

It happened at the Teton County clerk's office yesterday in Wyoming, as reported in the L.A. Times' Countdown to Crawford, when the vice president, accompanied by his wife and a Secret Service detail, dropped in unexpectedly to cast an absentee ballot in next Tuesday's primary election.

An election worker, Mike Farady, asked the vice president for his driver's license.

"The reason is we are supposed to confirm identity with a photo ID and it also helps confirm residency and that was the easiest way to do it," Farady told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "I know he is the vice president and I know he can vote, but I wanted to make sure he can vote here and now."

Others hanging around the clerk's office were delighted at the exchange.

"I was sitting here and saw the Secret Service come in," said fellow voter Bob Grady. "Isn't that a great thing about the United States of America that you can be filling in your ballot and the vice president comes in and votes next to you?"

by Mark Silva and updated with followup.

Stephen Payne, a significant fundraiser for President Bush's election and reelection campaigns, certainly didn't know he was being videotaped when he suggested that he could arrange some meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration with a big donation to the Bush presidential library.

And Payne, a Houston-based lobbyist and longtime Bush-backer who has served as a volunteer travel-advance planner for White House trips abroad, later told the Sunday Times of London, which today reported on the videotaped meeting between Payne and a Kazakh exile in London purportedly seeking some high-level contact with the Bush administration for a friend back home, that he certainly intended no "quid pro quo.''

For its part, the vice president's office says today that the lobbyist certainly does not arrange meetings for the vice president - though Payne did take part in advance travel planning for the vice president's trip to Kazakhstan in May 2006. And a spokesman for the Bush presidential library says today that the library certainly does not condone any contributions in exchange for anything, and Payne was not making any solicitations or representations on the library's behalf.

"It would be like, maybe a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or something like that, not a huge amount but enough to show that they're serious,'' Payne suggested of the library donation in the meeting videotaped by the newspaper.

Payne, who told the newspaper that he intended nothing untoward, maintained today in a statement delivered to the Tribune that he has been the victim of a "confidence game'' played by the British newspaper, which has taken his comments out of context in a bid to "entrap'' him.

In his discussions with the Kazakh exile, Payne said in his statement today: "I did mention that they might be able to make donations to think tanks, foundations, and/ or President Bush's library because the first President Bush accepted foreign donations -- but I was clear that much ground work would have to be done to make a... donation acceptable to the library foundation. Indeed, I noted that to the best of my knowledge, the decision even to accept any foreign contributions for the library was still unknown.''

He said he had also made it clear "in this conversation and in subsequent e-mails that any donations would need to be completely transparent and open to public scrutiny.

"It is clear that the Times attempted to entrap me into alleging that an illegal relationship could be established,'' Dos says in his statement, maintaining that the e-mails show that it was Dos who attempted "to establish a quid pro quo and my consistent responses that there could be no quid pro quo.''

Payne has provided a copy of his e-mail correspondence here: Payne emails.pdf

And his full statement is available here: Payne statement.pdf

The story starts in London, where the Sunday Times surreptitiously took part in a hotel meeting with Payne, who proudly displayed some photographs on his personal organizer: Pictures of Payne uprooting dead trees side by side with President Bush at his ranch in Texas, skeet- shooting next to Dick Cheney and mugging for the cameras with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

by Mark Silva

In an homage to Tony Snow, who had not always agreed with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney says he too has not always agreed with the president - but that he and Snow, the late former press secretary of the president - "the best'' he has known - were part of a team.

"He was a major player in the conservative movement,'' Cheney said of Snow, who succumbed to a battle with cancer on Saturday at the age of 53. Cheney was interviewed by Chris Wallace for FOX News Sunday, a show that Snow had started hosting in 1996. "The way I think of Tony is he's unique in terms of the extent to which he knew the news side of the business; then as a commentator and -- but also somebody who worked as part of the White House staff as a speechwriter and of course as press secretary.

"There are very, very few people that have had as much experience on both sides of the divide, if you will,'' Cheney said of Snow, who had worked as an editorial writer before becoming lead speechwriter for former President George H.W. Bush and who served as a FOX commentator before going to work for this president and had returned to the air on CNN after leaving the White House in September.

"I don't know anybody who had as much experience on both sides,'' Cheney told Wallace, in the interview airing today. "You can think of people like Rush Limbaugh, obviously, who are giants in the profession, but always on the commentary side. And there aren't many who've done what Tony did.''

Asked about Snow's "brand of conservativism,'' Cheney said: "I frankly agreed with him on nearly everything, and I'm generally viewed as pretty conservative.

Cheney speaks in April at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Washington. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

by Frank James

You might think Vice President Cheney, after getting so badly burned by bad intelligence and his own faulty assumptions before the Iraq War would be a lot more careful about his use of "facts."

No such luck. The vice president, arguing for oil and gas drilling off the Florida coast on Wednesday tried to justify such drilling by saying that the Cubans were allowing the Chinese to drill in the ocean waters just 60 miles from the Florida at a time when Congress refused to permit U.S. companies to drill as close as that to the coast.

But the Chinese aren't drilling in Cuban waters 60 miles off Florida's coast.

According to the Associated Press:

Vice President Dick Cheney's office acknowledged on Thursday that he was mistaken when he asserted that China, at Cuba's behest, is drilling for oil in waters 60 miles from the Florida coast.

"It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there," according to the statement.

by Mark Silva

We knew that Vice President Dick Cheney had left Yale under less than honorable terms - "by mutual agreement,'' as he put it today -- but maybe we had forgotten, until today, that he also was kicked out of Kindergarten.

That's what the vice president told radio's Chaz and A.J. in the Morning Show, in an interview with the Connecticut broadcasters conducted today in the Senate office of Sen. Joe Lieberman (notice how Lieberman, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2000, keeps showing up with Republicans such as Sen. John McCain and Dick Cheney these days?)

Cheney had returned to Lincoln, Nebraska, his birthplace, a couple years ago and "the candidate I was there to speak for arranged for my two Kindergarten teachers to come visit me... Of course, I was a lot older than I had been when I was in Kindergarten. But they found them both. They were both still alive, and you might ask why I had two kindergarten teachers...

"I got kicked out of one school and had to go to the other one,'' he said, to which his interviewer suggested: "Well, you showed them, huh?''

Cheney likes to talk about his experience at Yale during college commencement addresses that he delivers. "I did two years at Yale and then left by mutual agreement,'' he noted today, with Lieberman interrupting to say that, 'This is an encouragement for anybody who's ever been kicked out of college.''

"The president went up there right after we were elected,'' Cheney said. "Of course he was a graduate of Yale, I think, with a 'C' average, and he said to the student body that day, the graduating class, he said, "You know, if you graduate from Yale with a 'C' average you can be president of the United States.' He said, of course, 'If you (get) kicked out, you can be vice president.' So he reminds me of that periodically.''

And Cheney, of course, wasn't supposed to be the vice president in the first place. He was in charge of Bush's search for a running mate.

"The way it actually worked was, they talked to me about whether or not I was interested in the job originally, and I said, 'No, definitely not interested.' and then they came back and said, 'Would you help us find somebody?' and I said, "Sure, I'd be happy to do that.' We got through doing the search. It took a couple of months, and at the end of the day, the president, after we reviewed all the candidates, looked at me and said, you know, you're the solution to my problem. I took that as a threat and redoubled my efforts... (But) it's been well worth the efforts.''

See excerpts of that radio interview here, courtesy of the White House:

by Mark Silva

Near the end of his tenure, the most powerful vice president in the history of the United States pauses to assess "the most important achievements of the administration and any disappointments.''

That was the question put to Vice President Dick Cheny at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Most important achievements of our administration, well, I would point to what we've done with respect to the global war on terror,'' said Cheney, calling all that the Bush administration has done in response to the terrorist attacks of 2001 the most significant achievement - and counting the administration's tough interrogation of suspected terrorists among those achievements.

There were not, however, any "disappointments'' enumerated in the vice president's response.

"I would put foremost among what we accomplished as an administration the president's judgment and then decision that we then acted upon and have implemented,'' Cheney said of the terrorism of 9/11. "Since it was a strategic threat... we needed to martial all of the elements of strategic power to deal with it and try to defeat it....

"I mean, when we ran in 2000 and I remember signing on with the [resident, we had a number of issues we were focused on,'' the vice president said. "We wanted to strengthen national defense. We wanted to improve our educational system, No Child Left Behind. We wanted to cut taxes. We thought it was important to reduce the overall tax burden on the American people. We had budget surpluses at that point and we didn't want government to take any more money than it needed.

"That's sort of the basis upon which we ran and I think we were able to deliver on most of those. We got the education program passed; the tax package passed finally in '03, for example; and put in place a lot of those cuts that I talked about here today. So I feel good about that.

"What we did not anticipate when we ran, obviously, was 9/11,'' Cheney said in reply to the question at the U.S. chamber yesterday, across the park from the White House. "And what 9/11 represented was, sort of, the culmination, if you will, of a series of attacks on Americans and American interests that went back a good 10 years.

by Matthew Hay Brown

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced legislation last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, is now aiming higher.

On the House floor this evening, the Ohio Democrat proposed impeaching President Bush. In language similar to that in the articles of impeachment he raised against Cheney, Kucinich sought support for a 35-count indictment charging Bush with misleading Congress and the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Democratic House leaders have opposed impeaching Bush or Cheney as an unhelpful distraction. They were nearly embarrassed last year when Republicans voted to take up Kucinich's effort against Cheney in order to force a debate; they are unlikely to let the matter get so far this time.

Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, one of the groups pushing for impeachment congratulated Kucinich on his "historic leadership."

"We've waited seven years to find one Member of Congress brave enough to stand up for our Constitution, for which generations of Americans have fought and died," Fertik said. "We are thrilled and honored that Dennis Kucinich has chosen to be that one genuine patriot."

by Katie Fretland and updated

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin has called on Dick Cheney to apologize for remarks he made about the state today at the National Press Club.

And indeed the vice president has apologized.

Cheney had spoken of his family history and said he had Cheneys from both sides of his family. "And we don't even live in West Virginia," Cheney said. "You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

Cheney's words sparked this response from Manchin, who defended the state:

"I truly cannot believe that any vice president of the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would make such a derogatory statement about my state or any state for that matter," Manchin said in a statement on his Web site.

"West Virginia is home to some of the most patriotic people in the nation and our sons and daughters have answered the call to duty every time a president has needed their service. They deserve better from the vice president, and so I would simply ask for his apology."

And this evening, the vice president's office said no offense was intended.

"The vice president's off-hand comment was not meant to hurt anyone,'' said Lea Anne McBride, spokeswoman for Cheney. "On reflection, he concluded that it was an inappropriate attempt at humor that he should not have made. The vice president apologizes to the people of West Virginia for the inappropriate remark."

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, who has served four presidents in his time, looks at the controversy surrounding this administration and suggests, this is nothing.

Cheney, who spoke at the National Press Club today, was asked about the new book by the former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, who has written of the Bush White House and Washington's "culture of deception.''

"I haven't read Scott McClellan's book,'' Cheney said. "I don't plan to read Scott McClellan's book any time soon.

"There's a lot made of how difficult it is to operate in Washington, how partisan it gets at times, how tough the battles get,'' said the vice president, who made his first White House tour of duty with President Richard Nixon.

"One of the things... if you go back and you look, have the perspective of time and have the benefit of being a student of history, as difficult as it may be now in terms of a partisan standpoint... I can remember the Watergate years... Certainly I would say, in terms of trying to match up the degree of partisan dialog and disputes we have now with that period in time, this doesn't look nearly as tough.''

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney - the "magic man'' of the Bush administration, in the words of the now-renowned Scott McClellan - stirred up the Republican faithful last night in New York, scene of the party convention that nominated President Bush and Cheney for a second term in 2004.

"New York certainly knows how to throw a party,'' Cheney said at a $1,000-per-plate dinner of the New York Republican State Committee in Manhattan attended by the former mayor and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate, Rudy Giulianii. "We have fond memories of that week -- the great hospitality, the superb convention, and the momentum that brought us to an historic re-election victory.

"Now, of course, we've begun to focus on another big election,'' Cheney said. "And if we all put our shoulders to the wheel between now and November, I'm confident we'll see John McCain as the next president of the United States.''

Cheney has held extraordinary sway in the administration that McClellan, the former press secretary, accused this week of waging a "political propaganda machine'' for the promotion of the war in Iraq. But Cheney made no mention of the McClellan book which so many in and around the administration have been ready to criticize this week. And here Cheney, stirring the party for the 2008 contest, was returning to the themes that he and Bush pushed in 2004 - tax cuts and national security.

"President Bush and I look forward to helping our candidates, up and down the ticket, throughout the important election year,'' he said last night in New York. "And the stakes are very high. Whether the issue is the economy, or energy, or the federal courts, or national security, the right answers for our nation are not coming from Democrats, but from Republicans.

"Right now, with the economy going through a rough patch, some in Washington view it as an excuse for expanding the size and scope of the federal government. Republicans believe that when Americans are facing tough times, the first thing we should do is let them keep more of their own money. That's why the President proposed and signed a stimulus package with immediate, direct relief to the American taxpayer.''

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, who has gotten into a pretty good rhythm of telling jokes on himself near the end of his term, told a crowd at a Republican Party fundraiser in Tulsa, Olka., last night: "I don't care what you say, I'm not running again.''

Appearing there with Sen. Jim Inhofe, Cheney said: "Kim didn't mention that Sen. Clinton has taken to calling me Darth Vader... Actually, I asked my -- it was a little disturbing when that first happened -- I asked my wife, Lynne, the other day, 'But doesn't that bother you?'

"And she said, 'No, it humanizes you.'''

As low as the president and vice president - and the Democratic Congress for that matter - have fallen in public approval ratings, Cheney was downright bullish about the GOP's chances this year.

"I'm proud to note that four years ago, (President Bush) and I received more votes than any other presidential ticket in American history. We, for now, hold the record. But we won't mind at all if you set a new record in November, when you help elect John McCain as the United States president...

"The president and I look forward to helping our candidates, up and down the ticket, throughout this very important year. And the stakes are very high,'' Cheney said. "Whether the issue is the economy, or energy, or national security, the right answers are coming not from Democrats, but clearly from the Republican side of the aisle....

"John F. Kennedy once said, 'There is no way to maintain the frontiers of freedom without cost and commitment and risk.' We are learning this lesson once again, in these decisive early years of a new century. And when the history is written, it'll be said that we lived in a safer country, and a more hopeful world, because George Bush was President of these United States.''

by Matthew Hay Brown

Republicans have taken to calling the 50 percent increase in gasoline prices since Democrats took over last year the "Pelosi Premium." Democrats say Republicans are looking at the wrong time frame.

"When President Bush took office, gas prices were less than half of what they are today - and oil was less than one-third," Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey says in today's Democratic radio address. "Then, seven years ago, President Bush and Vice President Cheney secretly invited executives from the big oil and big energy companies to the White House to write our national energy policy. ...

"Now, they are hauling in record profits," Lautenberg says. "We are paying record prices. And their profits are coming out of our pockets."

Republicans have been hounding Pelosi to explain the "commonsense plan" to hold down gas prices that Democrats promised two years ago.

"Two years later, they appear to have no plan other than to increase taxes on energy companies and stand in the way of increased domestic production," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said. "So what we want to know is, where is the 'commonsense plan' to lower gas prices? And what is taking them so long to unveil it? The American people are waiting--and paying more at the pump each day they wait."

In fact, Pelosi has spent a good part of the last week calling on Republicans to help pass legislation to crack down on price gouging, hold OPEC accountable for price fixing and end tax breaks for oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy.

On Thursday, Pelosi urged Bush to halt deliveries to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. On Friday, Democrats called on the Federal Trade Commission to use the authority recently granted by Congress to investigate prices for possible market manipulation.

The larger problem is that for a price surge linked to market speculation, unrest in the Middle East, the week U.S. dollar and growing demand from China and India, there are no easy solutions. Lautenberg's address follows.

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney cannot get enough of the news cycle today, it seems.

First his radio interviews denouncing the remarks of Barack Obama’s longtime pastor as “appalling'' and calling John McCain "head and shoulders'' above Obama, then the flyfishing sunglasses reflecting something, but certainly not a naked woman.

Now the 2007 tax return:

The vice president and his wife, Lynne Cheney, today reported a taxable income of $2,528,068 last year – and report owing $602,651 in taxes.

They already had $466,165 of that tax bill withheld through withholding and pre-estimated tax payments, but will write a check for the remaining $136,486 when they file their 1040.

So much for the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

This White House Web-site photograph of Vice President Dick Cheney happily fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho has sparked idle speculation on the Internet about what's reflected in those sun glasses. White House photo by David Bohrer

by Mark Silva

People seem to be having so much fun with Dick Cheney's sunglasses -- judging from comments already logged at this site and queries on the Internet -- that we thought we'd reprise some of the suggestions for what's actually reflected in the dark shades of the vice president flyfishing on the Snake River in Idaho:

"It's a pack of Camels,'' C. Morris wrote to the Swamp.

"The flashback from the WMDs he's using to blow up fish with,'' writes John E.

"Of course she's a naked lady,'' writes Dawn Miller.

"Looks like someone next to a Ski-doo,'' writes Liz.

Well, it's not a naked lady, the vice president's office assures all. And in fact an enlargement of the photo bears out the official explanation: It's a hand on the fly fishing rod.

But, heck, this is Friday. The board is open. Weigh in here, or join a conversation already underway: Cheney's Shades: "A Naked Lady?''

You could also see this enlargement, but that spoils all the fun.

This White House Web-site photograph of Vice President Dick Cheney happily fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho has sparked idle speculation on the Internet about what's reflected in those sun glasses. White House photo by David Bohrer

by John Riley of Newsday

So, the Web sensation of the day is this picture from the White House Web-site of Dick Cheney, wearing sunglasses and flyfishing.

The reason: Some think they see a naked woman reflected in the shades.

We don't see it. But if you put "Cheney" and "sunglasses" into Google, you'll find lots of speculation.

And there's a story about the phenomenon below, which says the image -- enlarged -- is actually that of a hand casting a rod.

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, calling some of the remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright “absolutely appalling,’’ is holding back his view of how Sen. Barack Obama has “dealt with’’ his retired pastor’s words.

“I've watched what's going on on the Democratic side with great interest, and sort of blowing hot and cold in terms of who is going to win -- whether it is going to be Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama,’’ Cheney noted in a telephone interview with conservative talk show host, Sean Hannity, today.

“I thought the controversy over Rev. Wright was remarkable,'' Cheney said. “I thought some of the things he said were absolutely appalling. And, you know, I haven't gotten into the business of trying to judge how Sen. Obama dealt with it, or didn't deal with it, but I really, I think – like most Americans – I was stunned at what the Reverend was preaching in his church and then putting up on his website.’’

Obama, the Illinois Democrat leading in the Democratic Party’s contest for the party’s presidential nomination, has disavowed the most “incendiary’’ remarks of the retired pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, but has refused to disown the man, Wright, whom Obama has known for two decades.

Controversy over Wright’s most inflammatory remarks about racial power in America has subsided in recent weeks, opinion polls show, but the flap prompted Obama to deliver a speech about race and unity that was inevitable in his campaign as potentially the first African-American nominee of a major political party.

(Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others watched President Bush's war address in the Cross Hall of the White House today. AP Photo by Gerald Herbert)

by Mark Silva

Dick Cheney, home from a 10-day tour that ranged from Iraq and Afghanistan to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, “is not your regular road warrior.’’

So writes Deb Reichmann, of the Associated Press, who accompanied the vice president who travels with “a green duffel bag stuffed with nonfiction books about military campaigns and political affairs… an iPod and noise-canceling earphones to listen to oldies and some country-western.’’

The vice president managed to squeeze some tourism into this last trip. He and his wife, Lynne, and daughter Liz saw Topkapi Palace, seat of the Ottoman sultans for almost 400 years. “For all his globe-trotting,’’ Reichmann writes, “Cheney had never been to Istanbul, home of the Bosphorus Bridge that links Europe and Asia.

“More often, Cheney's days on the road are spent holed up on planes, helicopters, hotel rooms and stuffy government buildings,’’ she notes in an AP dispatch from Washington. “They are long, grueling days.

“His staffers say they have to run fast to keep up with a schedule that seems especially rigorous for a 67-year-old man who has had four heart attacks,’’ she notes. “Like the gadget inside his chest that makes sure his heart is beating in sync, Cheney paces himself.

”Pack the Diet Sprite — a Cheney favorite,’’ Reichmann notes. “Keep the decaffeinated lattes flowing and tune the tube to Fox News.''

In January, Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali I. Al-Naimi had said the Saudis would not be boosting oil production for Washington. Photo by Mark Silva

by Mark Silva

With gasoline pushing $4 a gallon and oil already topping $100 per barrel, the only word of relief today coming out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s meetings with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is an agreement that “longer-term’’ solutions are necessary.

Solutions such as drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Abdullah, who had made commitments of new Saudi investment in oil production as crown prince a few years back when he visited President Bush at his Texas ranch and also met with Cheney in Dallas, told the vice president that they are following through on those investments, according to an account after their dinner at Janadria Farm.

(The Web-site for Janadria Farm is sort of like the oil discussion itself -- "Please return soon for updates.'')

President Bush had visited and dined with the king earlier this year as well, and the Saudis publicly and firmly rejected the idea of any immediate increase in oil production as a means of satisfying the demand that has helped drive prices higher..

A senior administration official said no breakthroughs on short-term relief for tight energy markets had come out of Cheney’s meetings with Abdullah.

by Mark Silva

Hopping from war zone to war zone, Vice President Dick Cheney has used a palatial hotel on the Gulf of Oman in Muscat as a launching pad for surprise journeys into Iraq and now Afghanistan this week.

“During the last six years, the people of Afghanistan have made a bold and confident journey, throwing off the burden of tyranny, winning your freedom and reclaiming your future,’’ Cheney said at the presidential palace in Kabul today with President Hamid Karzai. “The process has been difficult, but the courage of the nation has been unwavering.

Cheney was asked in a joint press availability today at the palace -- reachable after a gauntlet of cement barriers in the war-torn capital, though Cheney's party flew from the air base in Kabul in CH-47 Chinook choppers to the palace because the roadway is so risky -- about the future deployment of U.S. troops and NATO forces in Afghanistan and the country's own role.

“Our general view is that we need to do both: That is to say that the United States and the other members of the coalition need to have a sufficient force here to be able to ensure security, to deal with a threat that's been represented by continuing activities by the radicals and extremists, and the likes of the Taliban and al Qaeda, but that ultimately security in Afghanistan will depend upon the ability of the Afghan people to provide adequate forces that are well trained and well equipped,’’ he said.

“So we are moving forward on both fronts, working with your government here in Afghanistan, to at the same time have U.S. forces continue to work in security and reconstruction, while at the same time we work with you to train the forces sufficiently so that someday Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own.’’

Sultan Qaboos bin Sayed the Sultan of Oman received Vice President Dick Cheney, left, in Muscat, Oman today. AP Photo by Hamid Al-Qasmi

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledges that it's understandable that people might read planning for a war in Iran into his Middle East trip.

Asking Cheney, in Oman, if he can foresee any point where military action might be taken, the interviewer explained that she was asking this "because when you come over here, people in the region start thinking you're over here to plan some sort of military action.''

"Well, I suppose that's because of my past history,'' Cheney replied.

"I've been pretty consistent over time about Iran,'' Cheney said in his interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz at the opulent Shangri-La's Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa on the Gulf of Oman, across the water from Iran. "I don't think I've ratcheted up the rhetoric. I felt strongly for a long time, and a lot of us have, that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.''

Cheney declined to comment on Adm. William Fallon, the Centcomm commander who has announced his retirement after Esquire magazine reported that Fallon was concerned about the administration ratcheting up war talk about Iran. "The admiral had many years of distinguished service in the United States Navy,'' Cheney said. "I think he deserves our thanks for his service.''

But Cheney spoke at length about continuing concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions -- which he considers both ongoing and unacceptable.

"I think the important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area,'' the vice president said, asked about the National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had suspeded a nuclear-weapons building program four years before.

by Mark Silva

Leave it to the Heritage Foundation to hold a dinner celebrating “the 25th anniversary of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.’’

And leave it to Vice President Dick Cheney to deliver the keynote address.

”Well, if we're going to talk about Star Wars, we might as well invite Darth Vader,’’ Cheney joked about the intentions of his hosts last night. “I'm happy to accept.

“It's plain to see that the world around us gives ample reason to continue working on missile defense,’’ said Cheney, commenting on the passing of the Cold War and the start of a dangerous new era in international relations. “In the ongoing political campaign, there's been discussion recently about 3 a.m. phone calls,’’ he said to laughter.

“We all hope that a commander in chief never has to pick up the line and be told that a ballistic missile is heading toward the United States,’’ he said. “In such an instance, catastrophe would be minutes away. And the best tool we can leave to a future commander-in-chief is a weapon of defense to blow that missile out of the sky.’’

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney appeared in Atlanta last night.

But Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) was not at the Georgia Republicans’ President’s Day Dinner.

“I know Saxby is going to win another term this November,’’ Cheney told the crowd. “Saxby, of course, is a very courageous man. I know that because he's one of my hunting buddies.’’

Cheney, who can tell the joke on himself now that some time has passed since he accidentally wounded a hunting companion in Texas, enjoyed the reception he got from the audience last night.

“A welcome like that is almost enough to make me want to run for office again,’’ he said to applause and laughter. “Almost, I said.’’

Because he serves as president of the Senate, Cheney said, he gets to see a lot of the senators.

“As vice president the only real duties you have under the Constitution is to preside over the Senate and to cast tie-breaking votes,’’ he said. “In fact, before the Constitution was written, some believed the vice presidency was entirely unnecessary. Benjamin Franklin said that if the office were to be created, anyone who served as vice president should be addressed as "Your Superfluous Excellency."

“That's a lot better than some of the things I've been called,’’ Cheney said.

There was a serious side to this talk, of course.

Recruits at Naval Station Great Lakes applaud Vice President Cheney at the training facility in Great Lakes, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney took a field trip today to see a simulated missile strike and send off a new crew of Navy recruits.

During his outing at Naval Station Great Lakes, the vice president reminisced about how, as a boy, he though the Navy had turned his father into a bird. We'll explain this -- it's a cute story.

Air Force Two landed at Waukegan Regional Airport, at about 10:45 am local time, and Cheney traveled by motorcade to Naval Station Great Lakes, home to the Navy’s boot camp for recruits. Cheney delivered private remarks at a “capping ceremony’’ for about 350 recruits – removing their caps reading, "Recruit," and replacing them with caps marked, "Navy.’’

Then the vice president took a tour of a replica destroyer, a 5/8th-scale ship used in training. “The tour included a simulated missile attack, featuring loud, explosion-like noises and blinking lights,’’ the print pool ress pooler on the trip, Matt Stearns of McClatchy Newspapers, reports. Cheney “appeared to enjoy the tour that followed, during which he watched how recruits are trained to respond to a strike, such as firefighting and aiding the wounded.’’

“Thank you,’’ Cheney said at tour’s end. “It looks like a great system.’’

Then, addressiing about 5,000 recruits and sailors, he recalled that his father, Richard Cheney, had gone through boot camp at Great Lakes during World War II. His father came home on leave and explained to young Cheney, then 4, that he was a yeoman in the Navy, and he showed his son the bird-like insignia on his shoulder.

"It's one of my earliest memories, so I wasn't very old, obviously, at the time.'' the vice president told the sailors. "I had a lot of questions for him -- where had he been? What had he been doing? He explained to me that he was now in the Navy. He said he was a yeoman

"He pointed to the insignia there on his shoulder, which looked to me an awful lot like a bird,'' Cheney said. "Being only four years old, I concluded that when Dad was home, he was just Dad -- but when he went back to the Navy, he turned into some kind of bird....

"You see, very early in life, I decided the United States Navy could do just about anything.''

by Frank James, updated with RNC response at 2:08 pm

It's one of the most clichéd questions asked in Washington ever since Sen. Howard Baker, the Tennessee Republican, said during the Watergate hearings about President Richard Nixon: "What did the president know and when did he know it."

Today, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.,) the Senate Majority Leader, puts the question to the White House. He wants to know what President Bush and Vice President Cheney were told in August about the U.S. intelligence agency's revised view that Iran in 2003 essentially stopped its head-long pursuit of nuclear-weapons.

In a press release, Reid said:

“I am growing increasingly concerned about the White House’s inconsistent explanations of when the President was told about important new intelligence information regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It appears the President and Vice President were briefed in August on this information, before both the President and Vice President began to ratchet up their increasingly-heated rhetoric on the threat of Iran.

"I urge the White House to fully and accurately explain what the President and Vice President knew and when they knew it, and why the Administration’s rhetoric was not adjusted when presented with new data this summer. I find it surprising the Administration did not learn the lessons of Iraq; it was exactly this type of misleading rhetoric that led us into a misguided, unilateral war.

“I also again urge the Administration to announce a top-to-bottom review of its Iran policy, including new steps to launch a major diplomatic surge to address the challenge of Iran.”

The White House likely won't be giving Reid what he asks for. But the National Intelligence Estimate released earlier this week provides Reid with another club to bash Bush on the question of credibility, to keep him on the defensive as he enters the last year of his presidency, and to try to win the public-relations war between the Democratic Congress and the White House.

by Matthew Hay Brown

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wasn’t able to table the articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, but he appears to have found another way to kill them.

After Republicans voted to force a debate on the measure introduced today by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Democrats voted to refer it without further discussion to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman John Conyers has expressed his reluctance to take the matter up.

The articles of impeachment proposed by Kucinich charge Cheney with misleading Congress and the American public into the war in Iraq, and trying now to mislead lawmakers and voters into a war with Iran. The Ohio Democrat, who is also running for president, has gathered 21 co-sponsors for the effort.

Party leaders have sought to avoid debate on an issue that divides their base. But Hoyer’s attempt to table the matter ran into opposition from Republicans, who wanted to see just such a spectacle.

"We're going to help them out, to explain themselves," Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, told the Associated Press. "We’re going to give them their day in court."

by Matthew Hay Brown

Quick: Of which major South American country is Hugo Chávez president?

If you answered "Venezuela," the score is now You 1, Dick Cheney 0.

Asked today how concerned he was about the influence of the Bush-baiting Bolivarian, the vice president appeared to install Chávez as the leader of Peru.

Or perhaps he was trying to show how little he cared.

"We have refrained from making public pronouncements about Mr. Chavez – I think, for good and legitimate reasons," Cheney said today during an appearance before the World Affairs Council of Dallas. "He’s a – obviously, an individual with his own agenda. And he spends a great deal of his time worrying about us and criticizing the United States.

"My own personal view is that he does not represent the future of Latin America. And the people of Peru, I think, deserve better in their leadership. But that’s obviously a matter they’ve got to resolve for themselves."

For the record, the people of Peru have resolved that they deserve Alan García in their leadership. They elected García president last year in part out of fear that rival Ollanta Humala, the choice backed by Chávez, would turn the country into a Venezuelan satellite. Chávez has been president of Venezuela since 1999.

President Bush met with the actual president of Peru, Alan Garcia, in October 2006, at the White House. Photo by Eric Draper of the White House staff.

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, whom the London newspaper, the Telegraph, now calls the sixth most influential conservative in the United States, is on the road again making the case for the administration’s war on terror.

In Dallas today for questions and answers with the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, Cheney stopped in Indiana yesterday to address the American Legion. And he is speaking in some largely general terms about a terrorist interrogation program that is causing the Bush administration so much trouble lately – including the hurdles that Michael Mukasey now faces in his confirmation as attorney general for refusing to call water-boarding illegal.

The CIA deals with the “tougher customers’’ in its interrogation, says Cheney, maintaining that civil liberties have been “respected.’’ And Cheney, unlike Mukasey, has been “read into’’ the interrogation program, as President Bush puts it. So he knows the specifics of what he is speaking about in more veiled terms on the road.

Terrorists are “hell-bent’’ on hitting the U.S. again, Cheney says. Only “a small number of high-value detainees’’ have gone through “the special program run by the CIA,’’ he says.

It’s “different’’ than what goes on at Guantanamo Bay, Cheney he allows – it deals with “tougher customers.’’ Yet, he maintains the interrogation techniques employed by the CIA are “designed to be safe’’ and “legal’’ and in compliance with international treaty obligations. Read: Geneva.

“We do not torture,’’ Cheney says.

And this is what he is telling people about the program:

by Frank James

by Frank James

Rev. Al Sharpton's publicist sent out an e-mail yesterday taking Vice President Cheney to task for going pheasant shooting yesterday at a Clove Valley Gun and Rod Club in upstate New York which reputedly had a Confederate flag on display.

I couldn't confirm the flag's existence immediately so I didn't publish the e-mail in my posting yesterday about the vice president's hunting activities.

But it turns out the Daily News reported that yes, a Confederate flag was indeed on display at the club, though it appeared to be in a garage on the grounds. The Daily News has a photo of the flag.

The Daily News reports that its reporter was threatened with arrest after asking club officials for comment about the flag.

Meanwhile, Cheney's press secretary is reported in the Daily News as saying neither the vice president or his staff knew anything about the flag.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said Cheney did not know anything about the controversy.

"The VP did not see the flag and neither did anyone on staff," said McBride.

The veep earlier left traffic snarled - but little ill will - as he rolled into the bucolic shooting club with a 15-car convoy.

by Frank James

Former President Gerald Ford took a shot, so to speak, from beyond the grave at Vice President Cheney as reported in the new book "Write it When I'm Gone" by New York Daily News journalist Tom DeFrank.

DeFrank reports that Ford said Cheney, his old White House chief of staff, wouldn't be an asset to President Bush's 2004 reelection and thought he should be dropped from the ticket.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer reported on the Situation Room that Cheney's office had no comment about his old boss's vote of no-confidence. Ford died the day after Christmas 2006.

What CNN didn't report is that if the vice president felt angry about Ford's comments, he had an opportunity to work it off today. He was in upstate New York with a shotgun in his hands. Yes, he was hunting.

The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that he was hunting at the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club all day today, leaving its grounds at 3:45 pm this afternoon.

There were no reports of lawyers or anyone else being shot by the vice president though it was probably a difficult day for a number of pheasants and similar fowl.

Of course, if the past is any guide, we in the Washington press corps are probably the last ones the vice president's office would inform of any mishaps.

Vice President Dick Cheney sounded far more animated in an interview with CNBC today than he appeared at a Cabinet meeting this week, pictured here with President Bush and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Photo by Chuck Kennedy/MCT

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, who once predicted the last recession, is refraining from any prediction on the next recession.

“I'm one for one,’’ Cheney said, “and I'll stay with a perfect record as long as I don't do it again.’’

And Cheney said the boss – President Bush – is “enjoying’’ launching his attacks at Congress. “He's doing it, and he's enjoying it,’ he said. Noting that the president already has vetoed one $35 billion children’s health insurance bill, the vice president said, “The House yesterday passed another one that is veto-bait as well.’’

As for “Cousin Barack,’’ as Cheney called Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois today, they haven’t had a chance to compare notes about their distant relationship. “We haven't had the opportunity to talk about it,’’ said Cheney, noting that “apparently we do have a common ancestor about eight or nine generations back.’’

Cheney hasn’t called the Democratic presidential hopeful to say, ‘well, heck, there’s a family tree?’’ CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked Cheney.

“I didn't know whether that would help him or hurt him,’’ Cheney said. “So I thought I'd probably stay away from it.’’

All this came up in an interview for CNBC’s Kudlow and Company.

“You’ve got to go back 20 years to find a time when the Congress was as inefficient as it is today,’’ said Cheney, a former congressman. “They're not doing their business.''

by Frank James

When I first saw this CNN footage of Vice President Cheney nodding off during yesterday's White House Cabinet meeting where the California wildfires were Topic A, I thought it was a bit of a cheap shot.

I mean, who hasn't dozed off when the leader of the free world was talking about a massive conflagration that had sent more than half a million people in the nation's most populous state running for their lives?

And he probably wasn't the only one in the room who felt that way.

It wasn't like Cheney was snoring or did some serious head snapping as he tried to push himself back into wakefulness. He was very smooth, very quiet about it. In short, he was very Cheney.

The vice president is a heart patient and, if he's on medication, that could be what made him drowsy. But it wouldn't take that. White House days start notoriously early and take their toll even on relatively young staffers.

So it really isn't much of a story that he took a little snooze. Still, it's not everyday that you see the vice president nod off during a discussion of a huge calamity. That makes it worth noting.

by Sabrina Fang

Vice President Dick Cheney. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

by Mark Silva

In the story of Dick Cheney and the accrual of power, it's best not to think of the vice president merely in the role he plays today: one of the last remaining players of a team that President Bush assembled in 2001.

It is best to think of Cheney in the context of four decades of Washington life, both as an adviser to four presidents and as a member of Congress. Cheney has staked his allegiance to the camp of executive power, with little regard for congressional prerogative or the courts.

But, having arrived with the Bush administration with an ingrained predilection for executive privilege and a penchant for secrecy, the stunning trauma of the first year provided Cheney with all the motivation he needed to activate the fullest powers of the presidency. That trauma - the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 - replays in newsreel fashion 10 minutes into the Frontline production "Cheney's Law" airing on Public Broadcasting Service stations tonight.

In the six years that have followed, the vice president and his closest adviser have written a sweeping new chapter in American law. It centers on the asserted powers of a president at war but reaches beyond the battlefield. It encompasses the ability of a president to chart his own course and navigate his way around any restrictions that Congress and the Supreme Court might attempt to impose on him.

See a preview of the show and see the rest of the review in today's Tribune:

by Andrew Malcolm

We wrote earlier about the surprisingly blunt critiques of the Republican presidential field made by Dan Bartlett, who was President Bush's counselor until July.

Well, the Washington Post's Al Kamen has published a little bit more of Bartlett's critique, which came in a September speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These Bartlett remarks were about Vice President Dick Cheney and, frankly, how much trouble it is to work with the taciturn, determined Washington veteran. "Team player" is not the term that comes to mind. Indeed, Cheney was a wrestler (as, interestingly enough, was his longtime Washington buddy and colleague, Donald Rumsfeld).

Bartlett, one of Bush's most-trusted loyalists from the early days of his Texas governorship, was for years in charge of political rapid response, which translates into damage control when something unexpected and usually bad happens. Bartlett, like most such professionals, is a believer in the really rapid response approach, meaning assemble all the bad news and your reaction as quickly as possible and get it all out at once and over with. Leave no lingering loose ends.

So as the 2000 Republican National Convention got underway and the vice presidential nominee-designate was en route to Philadelphia, Bartlett learned that Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary, intended to travel with her father's campaign. Bartlett smartly anticipated considerable press interest in this and wanted to discuss the Bush-Cheney campaign response.

During an awkwardly quiet limo ride, Bartlett described the upcoming itinerary and said he'd heard that Mary would be traveling with them, and mumbled something like, "I just want to let you know -- perfectly fine -- but I just want to let you to know that the press is going to really focus on this; they're going to maybe intrude more into your lives than you may be prepared (for). Well, I just wanted to put that on the table for you."

And the future vice president turned to Bartlett and said, "We won't be talking about my daughter."

And Bartlett said, "Okaaay, thank you very much."

Cheney landing at Kabul, Afghanistan, earlier this year. Photo by Mark Silva

by Mark Silva

TAMPA --On the hustings, where Vice President Dick Cheney seldom is seen, the single most influential member of the Bush administration other than the president likes to unleash vivid rhetoric about the terrorism the nation has suffered and the dangers it still faces.

"One doesn't need a dramatic cast of mind to believe that our world really did change six years ago," Cheney said in recent and rare public appearances in Tampa and in Grand Rapids, Mich. "There will be no running, or relenting, until the problem has been dealt with -- decisively, systematically and permanently."

With his unrelenting reminders of the catastrophe the nation confronted on Sept. 11, 2001, and perils that remain, the vice president is the most persistent purveyor of the Bush administration's most aggressive case for the war in Iraq. Even while Gen. David Petraeus' testimony attracted widespread media attention, the single-mindedness of Cheney's war campaign, and the fierceness of his attacks on critics, have served to rally the base of the Republican Party.

And now, as President Bush appeals to Congress and the public for support for more war funding, Cheney is raising his profile. He argues -- as he did in a recent op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal -- that "the events of 9/11 are the defining moment of the era from the standpoint of national security."

See the rest of today's story in the Tribune:

Vice President Cheney greeted National Guardsmen and Marines who have served overseas at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. "You guys are doing the heavy lifting,'' Cheney told them. Photo by Mark Silva

by Mark Silva

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Vice President Dick Cheney, lacing an address in support of the president’s Iraq war strategy with repeated allusions to the terrorism of Sept. 11 and a relentless enemy which the United States still faces, came to the hometown and gravesite of a former president whom he had once served with a stern message.

“Tough work lies ahead,’’ Cheney said of the war in Iraq. “But the evidence from the theater of war 6,000 miles away is beyond question: The troop surged has achieved solid results, and in a relatively short period of time….

“Ladies and gentlemen,’’ the vice president told an invited audience in a theater at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, “the United States and our coalition are getting things right in Iraq.’’

Touting the troop withdrawals that the administration plans to make by mid-July 2008 – removing about 21,000 combat troops and returning the U.S. deployment to its “pre-surge’’ levels – the vice president said: “Further draw-downs in our military presence will depend on conditions inside the country, and on the recommendations by Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker…

“In any event,’’ he said, “President Bush will make his decisions based on the national interest and nothing else – not by artificial measures, not by political calculations, and not by poll numbers.’’

This thinly veiled reference to war critics marked the only political vein of a speech long on the lessons of 9/11.

The president, who calls the war in Iraq the central front of the worldwide war against terrorism, made a passing reference to the terrorism of Sept. 11 in his televised speech to the nation this week. But Cheney built his war remarks today upon 9/11.

“One doesn’t need a dramatic cast of mind to believe that our world really did change six years ago,’’ Cheney said. “For most of this nation’s history, we had been spared from attack inside our borders. But in a violent world, the safety of distance was suddenly gone… Events like those of 9/11 bring chaos and destruction, and leave no good options. After a day like that, our choices are not pleasant and they are not easy, but they are clear.’’

Vice President Cheney quail hunting in 2002. AP Photo/David Bohrer, White House

by Frank James

I'm not among those who see the invisible hand of Vice President Cheney behind everything that happens at the White House.

But I have to admit, as soon as I learned about this executive order President Bush recently signed, ordering federal agencies to enhance hunting opportunities on federally managed lands, my suspicions did run in the direction of one of our nation's most famous hunters.

Here part of the executive order:

Section 1. Purpose. The purpose of this order is to direct Federal agencies that have programs and activities that have a measurable effect on public land management, outdoor recreation, and wildlife management, including the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, to facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.

Sec. 2. Federal Activities. Federal agencies shall, consistent with agency missions:

(a) Evaluate the effect of agency actions on trends in hunting participation and, where appropriate to address declining trends, implement actions that expand and enhance hunting opportunities for the public;

(b) Consider the economic and recreational values of hunting in agency actions, as appropriate;

by Mark Silva

"I've had a great tour,'' Vice President Dick Cheney says in his interview with CNN's Larry King which the cable network is showing tonight.

"Ain't over til it's over,'' King suggests.

"Ain't over til it's over,'' Cheney agrees.

The Swamp brought you a report earlier this evening on the show, taped earlier today. And here's a full text of the King-Cheney session, enabling you to read along tonight if you like:

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, insisting that he isn’t worried about how unpopular he or President Bush have become, says in an interview airing on cable television tonight: “I don't worry about the polls. You can't worry about the polls.’’

Cheney, who will appear on Larry King Live, already has granted the interview that the CNN talk show host will air tonight. The two met in the ceremonial office of the vice president in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House – where Cheney reiterated something he had said yesterday about this executive office business: His feet straddle two branches of power in the governmental realm of Washington – the vice presidency itself, he said, is "sort of a weird duck.’’

Cheney talked about the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay – “We don’t do torture,’’ he told King – in the interview that CNN will show at 9 pm EDT. Cheney talked about the war in Iraq and mistakes made there – “Oh sure. There are always things in war that happen that nobody anticipated, surprises, things that don't go exactly as planned.’’ He talked about much more, including his resolution to retire after four decades in public life.

“We walk out of here on January 20th of '09,’’ the vice president said of himself and the president. “And I think we'll be able to hold our heads high knowing we did the best we could for the country. That's what counts more than anything else.’’

Read an account of the interview here in the Swamp:

The vice president has circled the world for the president -- Cheney seen here with Afghan President Hamid Karzai earlier this year in Kabul. Karzai plans a reciprocal visit to President Bush at Camp David this weekend. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Bush this week that Afghanistan is the leading front in the war on terror. Bush says Iraq is the central front. Cheney acknowledges mistakes made at war. Photo by Mark Silva.

by Mark Silva

With the White House asserting executive privilege in its refusal to let aides testify in the congressional investigation of the firings of federal prosecutors, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office has suggested that he is not actually a member of the executive branch in explaining his refusal to disclose the amount of his office’s classification or declassification of material.

President Bush updated an executive order in 2003 ordering executive branch agencies to make that annual accounting of their volume of classification and declassification of records to the National Archives – and several of Bush’s own offices, including the Office of Management and Budget do so. But Cheney’s office has refused to make that annual accounting since 2003 – a practice first reported by the Tribune last year.

“Well, the job of the vice president is an interesting one, because you've got a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch,’’ Cheney said in an interview with CBS Radio today.

“Obviously, I've got an office in the West Wing of the White House, I'm an advisor of the president, I sit as a member of the National Security Council,’’ Cheney said. “At the same time, under the Constitution, I have legislative responsibilities.

“I'm actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive,’’ he said. “I sit as the president of the Senate, as the presiding officer in the Senate. I cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. So the vice president is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you've got a foot in both branches.''

The most recent report of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, noting an overall decrease in the volume of material classified by agencies in 2006 -- with the Department of Defense accounting for a big share of the decline -- noted in another footnote to its May 31 report to the president that the Office of Vice President again had not reported in. The president's executive order required a report on all this activity at least once a year. Each year, the no-show OVP is footnoted.

Vice President Cheney and wife Lynne Monday, July 30, 2007 at ribbon cutting for the new George Washington University cardiovascular center named for them. AP Photo/White House by David Bohrer.

Vice President Cheney shakes hands with Admiral Edmund Giambastiani at a retirement ceremony for the officer in Annapolis, Md., Friday July 27, 2007. (AP Photo/Kathleen Lange)

by Mark Silva

Vice President Dick Cheney, who wears a heart defibrillator following four heart attacks, will undergo minor surgery on Saturday to replace a device in need of a new battery.

“During the vice president’s annual physical examination in June, testing of his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator indicated that the device’s battery has reached the level where elective replacement of the device is recommended,” said spokeswoman Megan McGinn, Doctors must replace the entire device to replace the battery, she said, and that will be done at George Washington University Hospital.

The defibrillator was implanted in June 2001 to shock his heart if he suffers an irregular heartbeat. Cheney, 66, has suffered four heart attacks and has undergone quadruple bypass surgery, two artery-clearing angioplasties and the operation to implant the defibrillator.

by Mark Silva

President Bush isn't the only one in the White House sagging in public opinion polls.

Vice President Dick Cheney also has reached the low point of his tenure, in terms of public job approval, according to the Gallup Poll.

Just 30 percent of those surveyed say they approve of the way Cheney is handling his position, Gallup has found. And, while Republicans rate Cheney more favorably than either Democrats or independents do, Republican support also has reached anew low level.

A comparison of Cheney's ratings with Bush's ratings over time has shown little distinction in their job approval ratings, but in their overall opinions of the two, Americans have consistently rated Bush more favorably than Cheney, Gallup reports of the latest poll. Cheney's previous low rating in the Gallup Poll was 34 percent, in March.

For more, see the Gallup Poll's report.

by Mark Silva

Sen. Dick Durbin thinks he may have found a way to get Vice President Dick Cheney's attention on the matter of the vice president's refusal to annually report how much information his office classifies and declassifies:

Pull the funding for the vice president's office.

The vice president's residence is safe, however -- the lights will remain on.

by William Neikirk

As it turned out, Paris Hilton spent more time in the pokey than Scooter Libby. To many people, that might seem unfair. But as famous and recognizable as she is, Hilton lacked one thing--she didn't work for President Bush (or Dick Cheney for that matter).

Despite his poor showing in the polls and stinging criticism by some that he could turn out to be one of the worst presidents in history, Bush has demonstrated that he tries very hard to look out for those who have shown him loyalty. By contrast, Paris had the wrong friends.

by Frank James

Congressional Democrats are warning the White House and Vice President Cheney that they will use Congress's power of the purse to cut money for the operations of the vice president's office unless Cheney comes clean on his office's handling of classified information.

Both Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) who chair congressional committees that make funding decisions for executive branch functions, including, the vice president's office, have essentially told Cheney to change his behavior or they will whack him with a financial hammer.

Here's Durbin's letter:

June 25, 2007

The Honorable Dick Cheney
Vice President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. Vice President:

As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government Appropriations, with jurisdiction over the Executive Office of the President (including the Office of the Vice President) and the National Archives (including Information Security Oversight Office), I have been following the story first reported last week in the Washington Post regarding your attempts to exempt the Office of the Vice President from a presidential executive order that establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified national security information (Executive Order 12958.)

I write to express my concern and to call on you to take corrective action regarding this matter prior to our Subcommittee markup, which could be as soon as the week of July 9, 2007.

Serious questions have been raised about both the legality and the appropriateness of exempting your office from the rules that apply to all other Executive Branch officials. According to press reports, the rationale advanced as to why your office has not complied with Executive Order 12958 is that yours is “a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter.”

by Sabrina Fang

With a reminder:

You read about this story first on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, in April 2006.

Today, with other leading newspapers finally catching on to the story, thanks to the publicity that Rep. Henry Waxman has given it this week, the operative joke around Washington is that there really are four branches of government -- the executive, the judiciary, the legislative, and Dick Cheney's office.

by Mark Silva

Rep. Henry Waxman has caught on to something that the Tribune first reported in April of 2006: Vice President Dick Cheney exempts his office from a demand that executive agencies report each year on the volume of documents that they classify or declassify – something required by a presidential executive order his boss signed.

The vice president maintains he is exempt from this reporting requirement because of the uniqueness of his office – not really an executive office, he says, seeing as he also sits as president of the Senate. And each year, as the National Archives collects reports from dozens of executive offices, the vice president refuses to report in.

Waxman (D-Cal.), chairman of the Oversight Committee, isn’t happy about this: "I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions,’’ Waxman now has written to Cheney. “It would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials."

"We are confident that we are conducting the office properly under the law,'' Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said today.

The National Archives have complained to the vice president’s office, Waxman notes, and also called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve this “impasse.’’ The vice president’s staff responded, Waxman says, by attempting to abolish the agency within Archives responsible for carrying out the executive order.

The Tribune first reported on Cheney’s refusal to take part in the annual accounting of classification and declassification in April 2006. Despite an executive order signed by President Bush in 2003 requiring all agencies or "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information" to report on its activities, Cheney’s office maintains that it has no legal obligation to report on its classification decisions.

by Frank James

Vice President Cheney has issued a statement of sadness and support for Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his former chief of staff, who was sentenced today to 30 months in federal prison for perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case.

Scooter has dedicated much of his life to public service at the State Department, the Department of Defense and the White House. In each of these assignments he has served the nation tirelessly and with great distinction. I relied on him heavily in my capacity as Secretary of Defense and as Vice President. I have always considered him to be a man of the highest intellect, judgment and personal integrity—a man fully committed to protecting the vital security interests of the United States and its citizens. Scooter is also a friend, and on a personal level Lynne and I remain deeply saddened by this tragedy and its effect on his wife, Harriet, and their young children. The defense has indicated it plans to appeal the conviction in the case. Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man.

Unlike most White House press releases, this particular one gave as a contact someone at the Williams and Connolly law firm.

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:05 am CDT

The last time that Vice President Dick Cheney flew out of a war zone, coming home from Afghanistan, a "senior administration official'' who went on to inadvertently identify himself as Cheney spoke with reporters aboard a military transport on the passage out of Kabul.

This time, on his way back from a trip with stops in Baghdad and an overnight stay at Camp Speicher in Iraq, the vice president offered an on-the –record talk with the reporters accompanying him home aboard Air Force Two to Washington. He spoke en route to a refueling stop in Ireland.

"The last time we did one of these, I tried to do it on background and I took a lot of crap for it, frankly,'' said Cheney, eliciting laughter from those around him. "So we’ll do this one on the record. That will necessarily involve some limitations in terms of what I can say, and I apologize in advance for the fact that I won’t talk about my conversations with the folks I visited with. That’s why they talk to me.''

But Cheney said he had found "a greater sense of urgency'' among Iraqi leaders with whom he had met. And this is what else the vice president had to say about a weeklong trip that included meetings with the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the leaders of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – a trip that is paving the way for U.S. foreign-ministerial level meetings with Iran over the state of affairs in Iraq:

Posted by Mark Silva at 4:30 pm CDT

Following a 29-hour tour of Iraq, including a night spent at a desert base near Tikrit, Vice President Dick Cheney concedes: "There's still a long way to go.''

In an interview with Fox News, which drew pool duty for the television seat on the vice president's excursion to the Middle East, Cheney talked about much more, including himself.

"You are portrayed by your opponents and some in the media as this sinister figure, as this cold-blooded warmonger who doesn’t care about the number of body bags going back,'' Fox's Bret Baier said to Cheney, in an interview conducted today in Abu Dhabi. "I know you read the casualty reports every day. I know you and Mrs. Cheney visit wounded troops privately. And I saw you in Iraq with troops in Iraq. But how do you feel about the cost of this war in blood and treasure four years later? And I guess the question most Americans have is how much is enough.

"Well, obviously, any casualty is to be regretted,'' Cheney replied. "Nobody likes to be in the position where they have to make those kinds of decisions. Obviously, the president bears the major part of the burden. He’s the man with the authority to commit the force.

"This is not a new problem for me. I served as Secretary of Defense during the Gulf war. I went to the services at Arlington after it was over with for the 148 killed in action that we couldn’t bring home again. We got everybody else home, but we couldn’t get them home. And when you see the wounded and the price they paid for their service to the nation and talk with the families of those who have been killed or wounded in action, it’s a very emotional experience, and it ought to be.''

For more, read the interview:

Posted by Mark Silva at 12:30 pm CDT

En route to Baghdad with Vice President Dick Cheney, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq said they would attempt to press upon the Iraqi government’s leaders that the parliament’s plan for taking “a two-month vacation in the middle of summer is impossible to understand.’’

"That’s clearly part of the message,'' Ambassador Ryan Crocker told reporters aboard Air Force Two. "It’s been part of the message now for some time. "I’ve said it. Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice has said it. I’m confident the vice president is going to say it.’’

Cheney, appearing alongside Gen. David Petraeus for a brief press conference in Baghdad’s Green Zone later today, was asked if he had conveyed the message to the Iraqis in his private meetings there.

“I did make it clear that we believe it’s very important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion and that any undue delay would be difficult to explain and that we hoped they would approach these issues with all deliberate dispatch, if I can put it in those terms,’’ Cheney said. “I think they’re somewhat sympathetic to our concerns.

So, the Fox News reporter traveling as a television pool reporter wanted to know, is the vice president confident they will forgo vacation?

“That’s a sovereign issue for them, just as our congressional schedule is a sovereign issue for the United States,’’ the vice president said. “But I think they understand the importance of getting on with the business that’s before them.’’

Posted by Frank James at 4:14 pm CDT

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) put back on the today's calendar his press conference to introduce his proposed articles for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Kucinich had postponed it earlier because of a medical issue that caused Cheney to visit with doctors today.

Kucinich's decision to go ahead with it may have been motivated by Cheney taking after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today during the vice president's visit to Capitol Hill.

Posted by Mark Silva at 4:28 pm CDT

In a simmering war of words between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney stepped out with some uncharacteristically public comments on Capitol Hill today about Reid's claim yesterday that the president is in "a state of denial'' over the war in Iraq.

Accusing Reid of "defeatism'' for his call for troop withdrawals, Cheney maintained that the Democratic majority leader from Nevada had taken "three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops'' and had misconstrued the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group as well.

"Maybe it's a political calculation,'' Cheney said. "Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics.''

"Vice President Cheney should be the last person to lecture anyone on how leaders should make decisions.'' Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, said in response. "Leaders should make decisions based on facts and reality, two words that seem to be foreign to the vice president.''

Posted by Frank James at 10:45 am CDT

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) was going to have a press conference today to discuss his plan to push for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But he's postponed it because of the vice president's unscheduled medical exam to re-examine a blood-clot discovered last month in one of his legs.

Kucinich's website bore this terse statement:

“News reports this morning indicate the Vice President was experiencing a medical crisis. Until the Vice President’s condition is clarified, I am placing any action on hold,” Kucinich said.

Posted by Mark Silva at 10 am CDT

Vice President Dick Cheney, who returned from a round-the-world trip, with 65 hours of airtime logged, in February with a blood clot in his leg, stopped off for a checkup with his doctors at George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates this mornign.

An ultrasound check of the deep venous thrombosis in his left leg "was reassuring and showed that the clot is gradually resolving,'' a spokeswoman for the vice president said today. "His blood thinning medication was found to be in the desired range.''

Cheney returned to work today with doctors advising him to continue on his current course of medication.

Posted by Frank James at 2:49 pm CDT

Rush Limbaugh interviewed Vice President Cheney on his show today and brought up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The way I read the transcript provided by the White House, it appears Cheney initially stuck to his talking points on Pelosi, the line the Bush Administration has pushed for days, that through merely visiting, the speaker undermined administration policy by rewarding Syria's bad behavior.

LIMBAUGH: A couple of quick -- more things before you have to go. What's the administration view today, what's the emotion, what are you thinking about Speaker Pelosi's trip to the Middle East, specifically, the conveyance of the incorrect message to Bashir Assad in Syria about peace talks with Israel?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's not helpful. I made it clear earlier that I thought this was -- created difficulty, if I can put it in a gentle form. Obviously, she's the Speaker of the House and ought to travel to foreign nations and ought to --

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:30 am CST

Vice President Dick Cheney will be taking some blood-thinning medicine for several months as a result of a blood clot found in his leg.

The problem was discovered Monday after the vice president felt some discomfort in his lower left leg -- following a nine-day trip around the world in which Cheney had spent about 65 hours in airplanes.

Posted by Mark Silva at 7 am CST

One of the most peculiar artifices of the White House is the "senior administration official.''

This is the official who provides all sorts of background information and insight into the White House's thinking on policies and practices for reporters, but refuses to permit his or her name to be cited.

Such as this "senior administration official,'' who spoke with reporters about Vice President Dick Cheney's intentions with his visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan this week as the vice president was flying out of Kabul on a military transport jet, according to an official White House transcript released:

"Let me just make one editorial comment here. I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.''

Afghan President Hamid Karzai welcomed Vice President Dick Cheney at the fortified compound of the presidential palace in Kabul this week, following Cheney's overnight stay at Bagram air base, where a suicide bomber's attack on the main gate killed a U.S. soldier and many more. Photo by Silva.

Posted by Mark Silva at 11:04 p.m. CST

The vice president spent an unexpected rainy and chilly night inside a reportedly comfortable special VIP container at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, having been snowed and rained in the night before, causing his planned meeting Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to be delayed.

This morning, Tuesday in Afghanistan, Cheney had breakfast with troops in a mess hall in the area of the Koele Barracks – and there is a lot more to follow on that geography.

We were able to stand outside in a covered breezeway of the mess hall, and watch the vice president step out of the mess, fully dressed in suit and tie, and walk through the breezeway toward us speaking with a two-star general, Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, in camouflage-uniform. They walked toward us speaking cheerfully, but the VP did not appear inclined to even recognize us standing there at the end taking pictures and waiting for crumbs, so we asked, how was the mess?

"Breakfast was excellent,'' said Cheney, passing on with a smile, at 7:37 am Bagram base time.

Posted by Mark Silva at 10:15 am CST

SINGAPORE – Vice presidents sometimes have power problems.

It had been a particularly long, eight-hour flight from Sydney to Singapore without the benefit of the warm fare from the galley or the film library aboard Air Force Two, with both the kitchen and in-flight cinema disabled by an electrical problem aboard the vice president's aircraft,

The vessel of Vice President Dick Cheney, it seemed, was at the mercy of a power surge.

The vice president was never out of communication with the White House, according to his staff. But the electrical problem was worrisome enough that they considered the possibility of swapping with a backup plane at Singapore. And to make matters worse, the prime minister of Australia had let on that Cheney's plane had been "diverted'' to this island at the southern end of Malaysia. No diversionary tactics here, the vice president's office maintained – AF Two was on course all the way, with a pre-planned stop for refueling.

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:30 am CST

SYDNEY – Vice President Dick Cheney, a good friend of Prime Minister John Howard, has come to Australia to underscore an alliance that has been critical in the war in Iraq. But he also came to lend some help to a prime minister seeking another term in the face of a challenge by a popular opposition leader calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

"With Friends Like These…'' declared the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, picturing a cartoon image of Cheney, appearing maniacal and holding a double-barreled shotgun, above the masthead of the Friday morning newspaper. It pointed to an op-ed column inside the paper.

Cheney not only touted Howard's support for the war on terror with a morning address to government and business leaders in Sydney, but also met privately with Howard's challenger, Labor leader Kevin Rudd. And Cheney paid a visit to Victoria Barracks in the hilly interior of a harborside city resplendent with sunshine and people crowding the streets to see his passage. There also had been some protests here against the war.

The Sydney Opera House at sunrise, the view from the harborside Shangri-La hotel where the vice president is staying in Australia. Photo by Silva

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:29 am CST

GUAM -- "Thank you very much – and a warm hafa adai to all of you,'' said the vice president, delivering a now-familiar speech to troops at Andersen Air Force Base during a refueling stop of less than an hour and a half for Air Force Two en route to Sydney from Tokyo on Thursday.

This was largely a repeat of a speech delivered the day before in Tokyo. However, the vice president made something clear this day that had been unanswered the day before – when he had departed from a prepared text in Tokyo stating that Americans "do not'' accept a policy of retreat and instead said that Americans "will not'' accept a policy of retreat. Cheney's staff had been unable to explain the departure after the Tokyo speech.

The vice president apparently settled the question in Guam by saying both things: Americans "do not'' and "will not'' accept retreat – and this emphatic line drew one of the few applauses during the speech delivered in front of many hundreds of troops in an open, humid hangar at Andersen Air Force Base. The prepared text for Guam still contained the "do not accept'' that was included in the Tokyo text. But this time, the VP improvised with both a "do" and a "will.'' So we queried again about the meaning of all this.

Cheney asserts that Americans now and in the future will not accept retreat, with the vice president seen here addressing troops at Andersen Air Force Base. Photo by Silva.

Posted by Mark Silva at 5:19 pm CST

TOKYO -- It's tough business, this foreign ambassador business.

Before Tom Schieffer was posted as the U.S. ambassador to Japan, he served in Australia.

"I told Tom we were training him up to come to Japan,'' Vice President Dick Cheney told his hosts over breakfast at the American embassy this morning -- it's a sunny Wednesday morning here in Tokyo as the workday is coming to a close in Washington and the Midwest.

The vice president, left, seated with the ambassador to his left and his national security adviser, John Hannah, to his right, facing a delegation of Japanese officials across the breakfast table. Photo by Silva.

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:15 am CST

TOKYO -- Half-way to Japan, Vice President Dick Cheney stepped out of Air Force Two for a breath of fresh, cold air in Alaska, with snow piled high on the windswept grounds of Elmendorf Air Force Base. This was a mere refueling stop on a 17-hour journey, which, thanks to the international dateline, started early Monday morning outside Washington and ended mid-afternoon Tuesday in Tokyo.

Two greetings awaited Cheney here in Tokyo:

The first was a red-carpet welcome that he received at the airport, with a long red rug rolled out on the wet tarmac for his landing on a drizzly, overcast day, with green-uniformed military men flanking the carpet leading from the vice president's plane to his motorcade, which whisked him into town.

Then there were the blaring loudspeakers of soundtrucks parked just outside a barricade near the American embassy, where the vice president is staying, with the trucks blaring music and chants, mostly in Japanese, but one chant in unmistakable English: "Yankee Go Home, Yankee Go Home.''

Cheney lands in Tokyo to a red-carpet welcome and a downtown chant of "Yankee Go Home.'' Photo by Mark Silva

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:45 am CST

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE -- As Vice President Dick Cheney sets out this morning for Japan and a tour of Australia later this week, word comes from Bush-Cheney administration-ally Prime Minister John Howard of Australia that the Aussies are dispatching another 70 people to Iraq.

Australia already has 1,400 troops deployed in Iraq, a measure of cooperation that the Bush administration makes a point of mentioning at every turn. And that will be mentioned many times over as Cheney addresses an assembly of government and business leaders in Sydney later this week.

Air Force Two warms up for takeoff to Japan and the vice president's weeklong Pacific tour. Sunrise-bleached photo by Mark Silva

Posted by Mark Silva at 7 am CST

Vice President Dick Cheney will “rally’’ U.S. troops aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in Japan next week, addressing the crew of the only permanently for