I appreciate the fact that Wonkette and Will Bunch are calling this out from Matt Drudge's sneak peek at Vanity Fair's new Cheney article -- but surely it's the tip of the iceberg. Why haven't we seen more details like this?

Purdum reports that Cheney travels with a chemical-biological suit at all times. When he gave his friend Robin West and his twin children a ride to the White House a couple of years ago, West commented on the fact that Cheney's motorcade varied its daily path. "And he said, 'Yeah, we take different routes so that "The Jackal" can't get me,'" West tells Purdum. "And then there was this big duffel bag in the middle of the backseat, and I said, 'What's that? It's not very roomy in here.' And [Cheney] said, 'No, because it's a chemical-biological suit,' and he looked at it and said, 'Robin, there's only one. You lose.'"

Six years into this administration, why isn't there a book full of such details? The Beltway press corps and punditocracy, always willing to play amateur Freud with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore, leave the odd corners of Cheney's psyche alone (and don't pay a whole lot of attention to Bush's).

Now we know about the suit. We know about the "undisclosed location," the secret energy task force, the paranoid revenge against Joe and Valerie Wilson, etc., etc. If the co-president of the United States is a clinical paranoid, wouldn't it be kind of a good thing for the public to be informed of that fact?

Naah. Never happen. Ever since Carter gave way to Reagan, the press has had a story it likes: Republicans are uncomplicated straight shooters. There are weird psychic shadows only in the minds of Democrats.