Dick Cheney is the most influential vice president ever to have served. He is both enigmatic and controlling, which has proved to be a shrewd combination. Amid controversy over Cheney's refusal to comply with an executive order that called for oversight of all executive branch offices a few weeks ago, the Washington Post published a four-part series about the vice president. Among other things, the story argues that Cheney and his lawyer David Addington secretly and almost single-handedly developed laws regarding the treatment and detention of foreign terrorism suspects. Under their plans, suspects could be held indefinitely without charges and without access to any court of law and could be questioned with tactics labeled as "cruel" as long as these methods weren't explicitly defined as "torture" (supposedly the line was drawn at burying someone alive). After reading the article, I began to see why Cheney is making crazy claims so he can dodge oversight and keep his secrets in hermetically sealed vaults.

Out of curiosity I started reading about Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's openly gay daughter. She published a book called Now it's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life last year, which avoids talking about the politics of homosexuality altogether. I don't blame her - with a partner of 14 years and a new baby, Mary Cheney is a walking contradiction. But hey, it's not her fault her dad happens to belong to a party overwhelmingly opposed to gay rights. And even if she has tended to fade into the background instead of speaking out, her presence holds significance in an administration that has gone out of its way to conceal all sorts of inconvenient truths.