Dick Cheney

No one in the cadre of national environmental activists seemed much surprised to learn last week that Vice President Dick Cheney is orchestrating the rollback in federal protections that marks the Bush administration's stewardship of America's natural resources. Most stunning about The Washington Post's revealing peek into Mr. Cheney's behind-the-scenes machinations was the depth and breadth of his involvement in a policy area not regarded as a key part of his portfolio. His many years in Washington - serving in three administrations as well as Congress - gave Mr. Cheney an intimate knowledge of how the place works, allowing him to put the government in service to his ideological and political goals.

Orioles fans can be a chronically grumpy lot. They tend to roll their eyes and sigh loudly when the subject of baseball comes up. That's what perpetual fourth-place finishes can do to otherwise decent people. (To this one can only add, thank heavens for the Eastern Division's last-place Tampa Bay Devil Rays, without whom our collective mood would be left in the dark spaces reserved for the latest American Idol reject and Dick Cheney.) But today is different. It's Opening Day. Opening Day does strange things to baseball fans.

Austin, Texas -- Among the small favors left in the wake of the Great Republican Victory of 1994 is the fact that President Clinton is soon to be retired as the national punching bag. For the moment -- these last two weeks -- the puffy First Talker in the White House has been replaced by the pudgy Talker of the House, Newt Gingrich, as the prime target of the chattering classes of the press, television and politics.Better than that, the victory of the Republicans has given us all a whole new cast of characters to bang around as the press and pols go into training for the next big electoral fight: The Making of the President, 1996.

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Iowa straw poll of 1996 Republican presidential prospects won by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole here last weekend only tells us what we already knew: Dole, from neighboring Kansas, remains well-liked here and would be the favorite to win the Iowa caucuses if they were held now instead of about 20 months from now, in February of 1996.In receiving 356 of 1,349 votes cast at an event he did not attend, Dole fell back on the party support that helped him beat George Bush in the 1988 Iowa caucuses.

Bob Dole, the Republican leader in the Senate, said recently he has instructed his advisers to "seek commitments" from strategists and fund raisers for a presidential campaign in 1996. This has to be his -- and his generation's -- last hurrah. On Election Day 1996, he will be 73 years and three months old -- older than any man ever elected to the presidency.Many political observers believe the torch that was passed to his generation in 1960 has now been permanently passed to a younger generation.

If I'm going to luncheon with Hillary Clinton, I feel a deep mora obligation to provide an irresponsible, highly distorted account of it.I am not one to drop names, but I was recently invited to a private luncheon with Hillary Rodham Clinton, First Lady of the Whole Entire United States.This is true. I got the invitation from Mrs. Clinton's office, and I said that heck yes, I would go. I will frankly admit that I was excited. Mrs. Clinton would be the most important federal human with whom I have ever privately luncheoned.

President-elect Clinton's choice of a trusted boyhood friend, Thomas F. McLarty, as White House chief of staff is by far his riskiest appointment to date. Mr. McLarty's greatest asset, the one asset that may bring him success, is his determination to be "straight" with Mr. Clinton -- in other words, to tell him he is wrong without any taint that he may have his own personal agenda. His greatest liability is a complete lack of Washington political experience in a post that historically has demanded it.The McLarty selection suggests once again Mr. Clinton intends to be his own chief of staff just as he says he will be his own chief economic adviser and much more.

WITH PRESIDENT Bush's popularity soaring, and the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination currently looking about as desirable as a free weekend in the South Bronx, you're hearing the foolish talk again about the Democrats using that nomination as something less than a serious bid for the White House.One notion is that the party ought to let Jesse Jackson have it, let him get clobbered, and get him and his political monkey wrench out of the Democratic presidential picture once and for all. Another is to give the nomination to 70-year-old Sen. Lloyd Bentsen on the notion that he will run a credible, if losing, race against Bush and thus prevent a lot of other good Democrats from going down to defeat.

WASHINGTON -- Three days into the fighting, the U.S. government continues to exercise tight control over news of the war, withholding information about the extent of the bombing and the destruction in Iraq and restricting interviews with troops and returning pilots.At the same time, journalists, particularly on television, have periodically failed to distinguish fact from rumor, and the public has received false and misleading reports.As a consequence, editors and news executives on one hand and military and political officials on the other are uneasy about the war coverage so far.The journalists feel they, and by extension their readers and viewers, do not have the information they need to assess how the war is going, information that reporters and editors believe could be provided without compromising security.

With presidential year 1992 fast approaching, Dan Quayle is likely to be more of a liability than an asset to President Bush's expected re-election bid.The latest Gallup Poll indicates that the vice president's public image has improved very little during his time in office. While there are a few bright spots in the results, even the good news must be qualified:* While Mr. Quayle is generally regarded as likable, Americans find him significantly less likable than his two immediate predecessors.

Evidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize - I thought Philip Roth should've gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair - but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December and stand on the balcony of the Grand Hotel and wave to the crowd along Karl Johans Gate, and, face it, Mr. Obama is going to draw...

What if Cheney is yellow? On Sept. 10, 2001, America was a strong and secure country that stood brave and firm for its laws and treaties, the ones that protect all of us, including our armed forces. The next day, according to Dick Cheney's battle plan, we turned into a nation of cowards, abandoning the red, white and blue for some kind of foul-smelling yellow flag of shame. Suddenly, some in power were screaming like frightened children: "We've been attacked! To heck with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and foreign treaties!

One of President Barack Obama's favorite quotes - which is attributed to Albert Einstein - wisely reminds us, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Some on the far left and some in the media prove Einstein's point on a daily or weekly basis with their continuous assaults against former Vice President Dick Cheney and his single-minded desire to protect our nation from nuclear, biological or chemical attack at the hands of terrorists. The latest onslaught from the left against Mr. Cheney has come because he dares to vocalize that Central Intelligence Agency interrogators actually protected our nation from additional terrorist attacks.

Only one out of five Americans is willing to describe himself or herself as a Republican these days, and frankly I am tempted to become one of them. For the variety, and because they need me, and because when I heard former Vice President Dick Cheney talk about the meaning of Republicanism the other day - "We are what we are," he said - I felt drawn to the simplicity and dignity of that. And I have never been a Republican, just as I've never been to South America, and that makes it tempting.

On March 26, the literary world marked the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death. The author of The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely was, along with Marylanders Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, a creator of the cynical, hard-edged private eye. His characters knew that politicians had something to hide, cops were on the take, women were dangerous distractions and whiskey kept a man sane. Chandler's writing was simple, straightforward: "I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a house in the country.

No one in the cadre of national environmental activists seemed much surprised to learn last week that Vice President Dick Cheney is orchestrating the rollback in federal protections that marks the Bush administration's stewardship of America's natural resources. Most stunning about The Washington Post's revealing peek into Mr. Cheney's behind-the-scenes machinations was the depth and breadth of his involvement in a policy area not regarded as a key part of his portfolio. His many years in Washington - serving in three administrations as well as Congress - gave Mr. Cheney an intimate knowledge of how the place works, allowing him to put the government in service to his ideological and political goals.

Seriously, now is the time for a real intervention. Those close to President Bush, people whose faith and loyalty he cannot doubt - first lady Laura Bush, his parents, perhaps an elder statesman or two, his preacher - need to assemble in his White House quarters one night soon, lock the door and sit the president down for a serious, forever-secret talk. Unlike the YouTube "intervention" parody on the Internet, the subject would not be the Iraq war, at least not primarily. The focus needs to be on Vice President Dick Cheney.

Orioles fans can be a chronically grumpy lot. They tend to roll their eyes and sigh loudly when the subject of baseball comes up. That's what perpetual fourth-place finishes can do to otherwise decent people. (To this one can only add, thank heavens for the Eastern Division's last-place Tampa Bay Devil Rays, without whom our collective mood would be left in the dark spaces reserved for the latest American Idol reject and Dick Cheney.) But today is different. It's Opening Day. Opening Day does strange things to baseball fans.

WASHINGTON --Tom DeLay, the fiery former House majority leader, knows why his party lost control of Congress last year. And he is not to blame. In his new book, DeLay, a polarizing figure whom Democrats sought to make a symbol of Republican corruption, attributes the Republican defeat in November to frustration with President Bush, the war and "a general perception of Republican incompetence and lack of principles." "I would suggest that Republicans lost because they did not communicate their message and their victories with enough strength to overcome short-term, media-fed issues that arose right before the election," DeLay writes in the book, No Retreat, No Surrender, referring in part to the congressional page scandal.

WASHINGTON -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's conviction ripped through the nation's capital yesterday like a late-winter storm. Damage was widespread. The White House clearly took the worst hit, but almost all of those involved in the case seemed to have suffered - including Washington's news media and even, at least in the eyes of his critics, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the victorious prosecutor. Found guilty on four criminal counts of obstructing justice, perjury and lying to investigators, Libby was dealt a severe blow by the verdict.