jesus h. christ... !

That's who the vice president apparently thinks he is.

Regarding the tug o'war between Dick Cheney, who wants to bomb Iran, and the State Department, which, surprisingly enough, wants to a) engage in dipolomacy, and b) has the president's ear for the moment:

The Cheney aide, who has met with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute along with other groups, "has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an 'end run strategy' around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument," according to Clemons. . .

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.

We may be in the midst of a "7 Days in May" scenario, or a variation thereof.

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Update: Supplemental from Greenwald referencing the last GOP debate as an example of the frightening prospect of another Republican presidency succeeding Dubya and whether that might represent the death knell of a Constitutional democracy in America:

But what is happening to the Republican party -- the transformation of its base from Falwell/Robertson social conservatism obsessed with abortion and gay rights into a macro version of the Little Green Footballs comment section, obsessed instead with, literally excited by, detaining and torturing people, maximizing government domestic surveillance, starting still new wars in the Middle East and being far more brutal with the current ones ("doing what needs to be done") -- is too extreme to ignore.