Dear God, What AreThey Up To Now?

American Scofflaw
Who did Vice President Dick Cheney meet with and when? No this isn't the first draft of an inside the beltway potboiler, it's the question being asked by journalists and activists ever since lawyers for President Bush and Cheney "directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor entry and exit logs, declaring them to be presidential records, exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them," reports the AP.

The White House insists the secrecy is imperative for "assuring that the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties," says the story. Others aren't so sure. "The question it raises is 'what are these guys hiding?'" says one Democratic consultant. One man who does know Dick Cheney's secrets is his former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby. Yesterday his lawyers argued that Libby should serve no time in prison for his role in the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity because "he is a selfless, apolitical public servant with an otherwise 'exemplary' record," reports the Washington Post.

Plame was also in a court yesterday, filing suit against the CIA "over its refusal to allow her to publish a memoir that would discuss how long she had worked for the agency," says the NYT. Her dates of service are already in the public domain but the CIA says the information is classified. This is "an unreasonable attempt at prior restraint of publication and a violation of our First Amendment rights," argues Plame's publisher Simon & Schuster.