Comic Relief from Cheney

One thing you have to say about our lame-duck vice president: He's been a barrel of laughs, and he got off a real knee-slapper at the National Press Club yesterday.

Asked about his kissing-cousin link to Barack Obama, Cheney humorously said they weren't planning any family reunions before November and went on to explain that, while researching the family lineage, his wife Lynne made another discovery.

"I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia," the vice president joshed.

After an uproar from politicians with no sense of humor, Cheney issued an apology, but one Congressman was not offended, "We may owe the vice president a debt of gratitude," he said, "for yet another great West Virginia slogan: Dick Cheney is not from here."

On the serious side, geneticists are looking into how much political idiocy and aggressiveness can be traced to inbreeding.

Obama and Cheney: Kissing Cousins?

This dynasty thing has got to stop. After all the talk about Clintons and Bushes in the Oval Office for more than two decades, now poor Barack Obama is being dragged out to sit on a branch of Dick Cheney’s family tree.

Plugging her book on cable TV today, the Vice-President’s wife Lynne revealed that Obama and her husband had an ancestor in common eight generations back.

"Think about this," Mrs. Cheney said. "This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor, a man that came to Maryland, could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick's and Barack Obama's."

Even worse, Obama’s lineage has previously been tied to that of George W. Bush as 11th cousins through a shared 17th century Massachusetts relative.

Oh, the nepotism of it all! America needs new bloodlines. Better check all the way back on Giuliani, Thompson, Romney and Edwards.