Dick Cheney's Margin Orders

Dick Cheney's handwritten notes in the margins of former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times Op-Ed piece (courtesy of Talking Points Memo) are quite appropriately gathering a lot of attention this morning, given that they seem to place the Vice President squarely in the middle of the controversy over who leaked the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame.

What few seem to be focusing on, however, are the equally curious, hastily scribbled notes the Vice President also appeared to have written in the margins of the "Marmaduke" comic below.

Mr. Cheney indicated he was confused by the caption, wondered if anyone else thought the comic was funny and demanded "somebody needs to get to the bottom of this". What makes this even more curious is the comic appears to have been printed in 1990, meaning the Vice President must have clipped it and only admitted to being stumped by it thirteen years later.