six more months of safety

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been granted six more months of Secret Service protection, his request being recently approved by his archenemy Barack Obama. "There's something mighty suspicious about President Obama agreeing to this so quickly," said Cheney apologist Mary Matalin. "Quite frankly, his acquiescence is downright disturbing, as though this administration wants to keep Vice President Cheney under close surveillance. I believe I know what Dick was thinking when he made his request; he was certain that it would be turned down and he could play it as a personalization of how Obama didn't want to keep the country safe. I'm afraid that we've badly underestimated the President's cunning. He'll do anything to keep the truth under wraps, even if it means keeping a great American like Dick Cheney under house arrest." "Mary is right," says protective daughter Liz Cheney, self-appointed defender of the Cheney name. "The Secret Service is a vast, shadowy, amoral organization who will work for anyone as long as they have the word 'president' in front of their name. President Adolph Hitler? No problem. President Satan? Ready to serve. President Hussein Obama? Just tell us what you need, boss. Obama's probably just waiting for the moment when he needs to bring my father out for some kind of barbaric show trial. And now they're going to have daddy all hemmed in. Oh god... They're even following me. They're not supposed to be, but I see them everywhere I go!" The man himself does not share in this paranoia, laughing off the fears expressed by his daughter. "So the Secret Service will do anything, will they?" laughs Cheney, speaking by phone from an undisclosed room in his house at 1126 Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia. "Well, I once told the Secret Service to kill Senator Leahy and they looked at me like I was crazy. So Liz can calm down. Paranoia is when you think somebody is out to get you. I know that somebody is out to get me - al-Qaeda. They want revenge because I marginalized their entire terrorist movement and made their operatives squeal. That's why I need continued protection, to protect me from that group of thugs. Them, and that creepy guy who has knives for fingernails."