Ghost in the Wire

In what must be one of the dumbest and strangest things yet from this administration, Dick Cheney recently took a pause in his busy seven country tour to respond to the group of reporters who have been following him around for the past week. After literally ignoring them for days, he decided to gather them together on Air Force 2 and hold a Q & A session on the condition that they do not cite him by name, but instead refer to him as a senior administration official. Ok, now this would just be standard, garden variety Cheney, obsessed with secrecy and kind of paranoid, if not for the content of what he said. To wit, here are the words of the "nameless" Senior Official:

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.

Umm. Err.

Obviously being a dark lord of militarism does not a covert operative make. I don't want to draw any big political or philosophical lesson from this, I just want to note it and ask: Does the Veep ever have to undergo routine psychological exams to check up on his mental competency to hold office? I thought I read once that the President does, but maybe I'm mistaken, as he's obviously not competent to hold office and no one has done a medical intervention just yet. Still, forget Bush for a second - I really think this is evidence of a Cheney mental breakdown. I wouldn't be surprised if we see him hanging out with Britney Spears or Lindsey Lohan soon. And then killing them and eating them, like he's the new Hannibal Lecter. I can almost picture him muttering about Rumsfeld's historical greatness while chewing through Britney's detached and ketchup-soaked arm.