Cheney Deserves Kick in the Shins: Dowd

But he'll be 'the guy in the room'

(NEWSER) - Most vice presidents enter office wanting to grab power and make a name for themselves. Not Joe Biden. The VP-elect is determined to roll back Dick Cheney’s massive power grab, he tells the New York Times. Will that make him less effective? “The only value of power is in the effect,” he says. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The Bush-Cheney relationship hasn’t tasted very good.” More»

VP-to-be will dine at Naval Observatory tomorrow to discuss transition

(AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney and Vice President-elect Joe Biden are getting together tomorrow night to discuss the upcoming handoff of the job as the nation's second-in-command. Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell says Cheney and his wife, Lynne, will host Biden and his wife, Jill, at their home. More»

But detected deadly White House toxin turned out to be false alarm

(NEWSER) - Condoleezza Rice recounted the day that she, President Bush, and Dick Cheney believed they had been exposed to a lethal toxin by terrorists. Cheney suddenly appeared on a secure video conference screen just weeks after 9/11 while Rice and Bush were traveling in China for the APEC summit. He warned them that White House sensors had detected botulinum toxin, and "we all—those of us exposed—were going to die," Rice revealed in an ABC interview . "I remember everybody just sort of freezing, and the president saying, ‘What was that? What was that, Dick?’” recalled Rice, who was national security adviser at the time. “We were just a little unnerved." More»

She recalls clashes with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush

(NEWSER) - It's time for Dick Cheney to take a little return fire from Condi Rice. Less than 2 months after his memoir described her as turning tearful during a political discussion , Condoleezza Rice has written her own book, No Higher Honor, which comes out next month, the New York Times reports. Rice recalls White House clashes and encounters with creepy foreign leaders:

• Rice argued with "ultra-hawkish" Cheney that terrorism suspects can't just be "disappeared"; President Bush agreed, and moved several from secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay.
• Rice opposed increasing troop levels in Iraq, telling Bush, "If they want to have a civil war we're going to have to let them." The president appeared pained over a war going badly, she writes.

Powell says former VP goes 'too far' in pitching his memoir

(NEWSER) - Colin Powell fired back at Dick Cheney and his revealing memoir yesterday, calling the former veep's revelations "cheap shots that he's taking at me and other members of the administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush," reports Politico . In particular, Powell rebutted claims that he publicly badmouthed the war in Iraq and was forced out of George W. Bush's administration in 2004. "The president knows that I told him what I thought about every issue of the day," said the former secretary of state. More»