Dick Cheney Weighs Heart Transplant

(Newser) – Former Vice President Dick Cheney needs a new heart and may soon join a transplant list, he revealed in his first interview since major surgery. He's suffering from "end-stage" heart disease and will make a decision soon whether or not to go ahead with a transplant. In the meantime, he's as irrascible as ever and has declared Barack Obama a "one term" president because of his strategies "expanding government and the deficit, and giving more power to the government over the private sector." Cheney also boasted that Obama has apparently recognized the wisdom of many of George Bush's anti-terrorism policies.

“I think he’s learned that he’s not going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Cheney told NBC in his first interview since receiving an artificial heart pump. “You’ve got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.” Cheney also pooh-poohed any link between angry right-wing rhetoric and the attack on Dem. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, calling the shooting solely the act of a "deranged, crazed individual." He indicated battling is an essential element of the landscape in an American system "designed for political combat" between parties that he wouldn't want to "set aside." That's the "heart and soul of our political system," he added.