CHENEY: RULES AND REGULATIONS ARE FOR LITTLE PISSANTS, NOT FOR ME

From The Washington Post:

...In a report this month, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity said Cheney and his staff have sidestepped regulations that require annual reporting of travel expenses of more than $250 received from outside groups.... previous vice presidents routinely disclosed such payments for lodging, travel and food when the veep and his staff made appearances at colleges, think tanks and trade associations....

Cheney's office says nothing is amiss. In three letters since 2002 to the Office of Government Ethics, which collects the travel reports, David S. Addington, then Cheney's general counsel, noted that the reporting requirement applies to the "head of each agency of the executive branch."

"The Office of the Vice President is not an 'agency of the executive branch,' and hence the reporting requirement does not apply," wrote Addington, who this month replaced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as Cheney's chief of staff.

...according to the center's research, Cheney has given 23 speeches to think tanks and trade organizations and 16 at academic institutions since 2001 -- apparently all at taxpayers' expense....

It appears that some sniveling, snot-nosed weak sisters don't have the cojones to tell the bureaucrats where they can stick their regulations:

Since 2003, President Bush's office has reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in such travel, the center noted.

But Dick Cheney is made of sterner stuff!