What does Cheney bring to the ticket?

Heh. In today's USAToday, Walter Shapiro finds Cheney more of a liability than an asset.

But Cheney's potential political vulnerability goes beyond Halliburton. The Supreme Court will decide this month whether Cheney had the legal right to refuse to release the identities of the executives who served as consultants to the vice president's energy task force in 2001. If the government loses this high-profile case, the press and the Democrats are certain to search for embarrassing connections between the Cheney task force and Republican fundraising.

Then there is the Justice Department's investigation of the Valerie Plame case, in which her identity as an undercover CIA officer was leaked to conservative columnist Robert Novak. This national-security lapse was an apparent effort to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, for his discovery that Saddam's purported attempt to buy African uranium was bogus. While the hunt for the leaker is shrouded in secrecy, Cheney has been questioned, and Newsweek recently reported that Libby is a ''key figure'' in the investigation.

Walter, you're so silly... without Cheney feeding him his lines, how will Bush know what to say? The whole world has seen how flummoxed he was on 9/11, thanks to Michael Moore. You think the admin's corporate masters could find another puppet-master between now and the convention?