Dick Cheney, Outrageous to the Last

So at first I thought, riiiiight ...

The Bush White House, on its last night in power, announces that Vice President Dick Cheney pulled a muscle in his back while moving boxes. He'll be in a wheelchair for the Obama inauguration.

Dick Cheney -- a man with a notoriously bad ticker -- is moving boxes? Don't those people have people to do all that menial schlepping for them?

And then I thought, what kind of boxes would be so important that the almost-ex-vice president would be moving them himself?

And then I thought ... oh, those kinds of boxes. Boxes full of papers that he doesn't want anyone else to see, ever. Boxes destined for his home shredder. That would be, uh, back in Wyoming?

A week before Christmas -- which was about three months after a federal judge ordered Cheney's office to preserve all his official records -- Cheney's lawyers were back in court, blathering that only the vice president can decide which records from his eight years in office should, by law, be handed over to the National Archives by ... oh, what's that deadline again? Oh yes -- noon on Tuesday, when he ceases to be the vice president. The same date when, according to the Associated Press story, Cheney could be ''potentially taking millions of records that might otherwise become public.''

Cheney's being sued by a public watchdog group under a 30-year-old law requiring the departing president and vice president to hand over most of their records to the National Archives. Cheney's essentially blown raspberries at the law, and its enforcers. After some National Archives staff tried to conduct a routine inspection of Cheney's papers several years ago or so, his staff reported tried to get that inspection unit abolished.

Cheney will be in a wheelchair for only a couple of days, the White House said. Can someone please frisk him as he rolls out of the White House and into private life? Remember, Oliver North's secretary Fawn Hall eluded NSC investigators by smuggling highly classified documents out of her boss' office -- in her boots.

Comments

[DanniD]

11:43 AM on 01/21/2009

The first thing I thought when I saw him in that wheelchair was...

Come...up...pance! Right on schedule!

[normathumb]

10:04 AM on 01/21/2009

You articulated my first thoughts. The chair was about not standing for Obama and smuggling out the scoop. I will never believe otherwise. The idea of that man lifting anything over ten pounds is way beyond belief.

[jdude]

09:30 PM on 01/20/2009

All I could see was Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove. Kept looking for the prosthetic hand in the glove

[lotechgma]

08:36 PM on 01/20/2009

I loved this post! OMG!!! somebody really should check out those boxes et al.

[squirrelhunter41]

07:33 PM on 01/20/2009

Excuse me, Ms. Morrison, but what was the name of that place from which President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, stole classified documents? Oh yeah, I remember now, the National Archives. You didn't seem to be too concerned about that "honest mistake."

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

12:50 PM on 01/21/2009

...hey hunter. The Squirrel is in your head.

[bayman]

05:49 PM on 01/20/2009

In that wheelchair, he looked like Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life. Fitting.

[lotechgma]

08:37 PM on 01/20/2009

Very!!

[plzchuteme]

05:21 PM on 01/20/2009

When I saw Dick Cheney being rolled out in a wheelchair, I could only think of one thing: "Guy Caballero!"

[texanna]

12:14 AM on 01/21/2009

Yeah, what was up with that hat? Did he inherit it from Abramoff or something?

[Toonadude]

01:06 PM on 01/20/2009

Shrink wrapped bales of C-notes are pretty heavy too.

[pcplz]

11:30 PM on 01/19/2009

I heard that on KO and also wondered what he would be doing lifting boxes. The report has been that all the staffers had left.......uh, yeah! I agree that he is doing something sneaky and there doesn't seem any way to stop him.

I hate still feeling helpless as far as Cheney is concerned!!

[ruweusmaximus]

11:50 PM on 01/19/2009

exactly! everything he does and has done for the past 8 years is suspicious. Americans should be paying more attention to this man.

good article.