I thought I heard Laura Bush asking her husband to set some mouse traps to get rid of the vermin in the White House. The problem is that there is no trap large enough to trap Dick Cheney and throw him out into the dumpster behind the presidential palace.

There's where Cheney belongs. His latest crime is something he did 30 years as Chief of Staff to President Ford, the guy who became president when Richard Nixon resigned during the Watergate scandal. Everyone thought Ford was an honest guy who would lead the country through the days of scandal, but Cheney was trying to turn back the clock the the good old days of Nixon's enemies list.

In 1975, after investigative reporting got a real shot in the arm following Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate reporting for the Washington Post, another legend, Seymour Hersh was uncovering all kinds of skulduggery in the U.S. government. Cheney would have none of it! He wrote out a list of options for dealing with Hersh's nosy reporting. Here were the options, according to today's New York Times:

Mr. Cheney considered possible responses to the article. One was to “seek immediate indictments of NYT and Hersh.” A second was to get a search warrant “to go after Hersh papers in his apt.”

Next to last: “Discuss informally w/ NYT.”

Last: “Do nothing.”

In the end, the administration pursued the last option, based largely on the advice of Attorney General Edward H. Levi.

That's right. One of the options was to search Hersh's home for his notes and another option was to seek an indictment against the New York Times.

The Times today has a great photocopy of Cheney's handwritten notes in which he calmly and methodically wrote out what to do about Seymour Hersh, one of this country's greatest investigative reporters. Click here to see the notes and to read the broader article about Cheney's authoritarian practices and how they connect with the trial of Scooter Libby, his Chief of Staff in the Bush White House.