The biggest piece of news not to make the news happened last week. It concerns the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s identity in revenge and Vice President Dick Cheney’s lackeys. It should all make us shiver in pause that a Machiavellian prince is pulling the strings and triggers in Washington.

The vice president’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, testified to a grand jury last week that he was authorized by his bosses to leak classified information in retaliation and an effort to justify the invasion of Iraq. The leaked identity endangered the life of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame and revealed that the Bush administration is willing to do anything ” including putting pistols to faces ” to get its agenda through and push for war. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention that behind it all, like Adam Smith’s mythological guiding hand, is Cheney.

Also last week, Cheney suggested that President George W. Bush’s illegal wiretapping and domestic spying program be used as an election issue. It is the vice president who still pushes that there is a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It is Cheney who travels the country under the mist of secrecy. It is Cheney’s former employer Halliburton that has benefited the most from Iraq and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It is Cheney who argued the hardest for our right to torture prisoners. It is Cheney who is leading the fight to intimidate the press, silence dissent and garner presidential control at the cost of checks and balances.

Cheney is indeed a character of an almost literary stature. It is as if the heart attacks that have brought Cheney close to death have fed his drive to dismantle the Constitution, control world oil flow and bully dissidents. Cheney is the most powerful vice president in history and Cheney’s jealousy of those who will live longer than he will is apparent every time he rises from the shadows. And it is this neo-con heart we must all worry about. Cheney feels he has nothing to lose, and sadly it is the United States that will lose the most.