Follow-up to a previous post: Award-winning Washinton Post series about Dick Cheney

On June 25, I posted Cheney under a microscope about the four part series about Vice President Cheney coming out that week in the Washington Post.
The articles haven’t won any awards yet, but I expect them to because they have had a huge impact on our understanding of just who Dick Cheney is and have even prompted a Congressional hearing.

In case you missed them, here they are:
June 25: 'A Different Understanding with the President'
June 26: Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power
June 27: A Strong Push from Backstage
June 28: Leaving No Tracks

The photo of dead fish is related to the Leaving No Tracks article: “Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

“Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.”

On June 29, one day after Leaving No Tracks was published, it was announced that the House Natural Resources Committee will soon convene an oversight hearing about Dick Cheney's role in the change in Department of Interior policy that led to the Klamath River fish kill of 2002-and to massive die-offs of juvenile salmon and steelhead very year since.

For excellent commentary on the Washington Post series and Cheney, check out the July 9 New Yorker article by Hendrik Hertzberg The Darksider.

Hertzberg describes Cheney as the “…[M]ost most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable ‘war on terror.’”

(photo of Klamath fish kill – Students.Washington.edu)