Let the Record Speak for Itself

The Regent is manly enough to know whether he's met John Edwards before the debate, and he says he never did. So these photos, taken from PBS video of the 108th Congress opening day, do not demonstrate that Mr. Cheney was lying. These 3 frames were pulled from about 4 seconds of video and a lot can happen in 4 seconds.

In this first shot on the left we see Regent Cheney swearing in the new Senators, note the guy at right of the photo. We are going to see him again. Let's call him Red Tie.

Next photo, on the right, note Cheney at left, and we just start to see Edwards at right, note Red Tie to left of Edwards, yes, it's the same guy from the other photo. Edwards is standing no closer than six feet from Cheney. And since Our Leader is six feet tall, that's a Texas-sized amount by definition.

In the last picture, again on the left, we see the ubiquitous Red Tie from the other 2 shots as the camera panned from left to right. And there's Edwards. Now we see why he's there. As senior senator from the Tarheel State, he was accompanying Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in.

We can understand why the Regent forgot this meeting with Edwards. As President of the Senate, he's constantly swearing in new Senators and things so he cannot be expected to keep track of the comings and goings of all these flash-in-the-pan politicos.

Here's another photo of Edwards and Cheney together at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2002. Again, Cheney should not be expected to remember everyone at that breakfast as Edwards was merely the co-chair, only sat next to him for two hours, and had the forgettable job of introducing Our Leader.

The Regent had a succint (and manly) response when informed of all this:

"Oh, yeah."

Best of all: he remembered El Salvador.