The Washington Post drinks Dick Cheney's Kool-Aid »

The reductio ad absurdum of Vice President Dick Cheney's penchant for secrecy has always been his office's refusal to reveal publicly the names of people who work in his office or even their number . When the government recently published its "Plum Book," a quadrennial listing of jobs opening up in the federal government, it omitted any reference to jobs in the vice-presidential office, in deference to Cheney's extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Instead, it repeated as fact a legal doctrine developed by Cheney's zealous consigliere , David Addington, to resist any scrutiny of his actions, or those of his staff, by the public. This doctrine is at best controversial and at worst utter nonsense. "The Vice Presidency," it states, "is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch." Translation: "What happens in the vice-presidential office is none of your goddamned business." The same language appeared in the previous Plum Book, published in 2004. (No such language appeared in earlier directories produced by the Clinton administration in 1996 and 2000 .)

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