Vice President Joe Biden brushed aside recent criticism by his predecessor Dick Cheney that moves by the Obama administration had put the United States at risk, CNN reports.

WASHINGTON – The White House says former Vice President Dick Cheney is the second most popular member of the “Republican cabal,” behind only talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Monday brushed off Cheney’s criticism of President Barack Obama’s new administration. Cheney said Sunday on CNN that Obama’s decisions are threatening the nation’s safety.

Obama reversed many of his predecessor’s executive orders, including how the country treats suspected terrorists.
 
Gibbs says Obama is keeping the nation safe and dealing with problems George W. Bush’s administration did not.

Gibbs says his sarcasm shouldn’t mask serious policy differences between Obama and the Bush-Cheney team.

WASHINGTON– The Bush administration is aggressively pushing back against a federal court order instructing the most important offices in the White House to preserve all of their e-mail.
     
Read the full story

PINEHURST, N.C. – Vice President Dick Cheney paid a visit last weekend to a North Carolina holiday gathering of elite members of the U.S. military.

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command said Tuesday that Cheney spoke at the closed event at Pinehurst Resort on Saturday.

The command includes Green Beret, Ranger, psychological operations and civil affairs units.

The Fayetteville Observer reported that resort spokeswoman Janeen Driscoll said the vice president arrived at 6:30 p.m. and left three hours later. Cheney spoke about 15 minutes to the gathering of about 500 people.

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said the vice president thanked the soldiers and their families for their service.

WASHINGTON – The high-profile White House meeting this week between outgoing and incoming presidents is being followed Thursday night by a much lower-key get-together hosted by Vice President Dick Cheney for his successor, Democrat Joe Biden.

Cheney, preparing to hand off his job as the nation’s second-in-command and following President George W. Bush’s orders for a smooth transition to the Obama administration, invited Biden to the vice president’s residence on the sprawling Naval Observatory grounds in northwest Washington.

The meeting will be more of a social call between Cheney and Biden, though both are steeped with long histories in foreign policy and national security issues, giving them much to discuss beyond the role one is soon passing off to the other.

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said Cheney and his wife, Lynne, have invited Biden and his wife, Jill, for a meeting and a tour of their soon-to-be official residence.

Biden, a Delaware senator who has been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has a grounding in both foreign and domestic affairs honed over more than three decades in politics.

Cheney is known as a chief architect of the war in Iraq and a hard-liner when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. He also presides over the Senate for tie votes.

With no clear-cut job description for the vice president, Cheney has said the role of his successors depends on the wishes of future presidents. Cheney himself isn’t sure whether future vice presidents will be as hands-on as he’s been. “I’m reluctant to say it’s a trend,” Cheney told reporters during an interview in Israel in March. “If you look at the history of the office, it can go either way.”

“You go back and look at how it’s developed over the years, it wasn’t until really, I guess, Richard Nixon was vice president that

he even had an office downtown,” Cheney said. “Harry Truman’s office was on Capitol Hill.”

Bush and President-elect Barack Obama held their historic meeting Monday.

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney experienced an abnormal heartbeat Wednesday morning, went to the White House physician and scheduled a hospital visit to “restore his normal rhythm.”

For the 67-year-old Cheney, who canceled a campaign event he was to attend later Wednesday in Illinois, it will be the second time in less than a year that he will have the cardiological procedure.

The vice president’s office said that after experiencing a problem, Cheney saw the White House physician. It was discovered there that he was experiencing a recurrence of atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm involving the upper chambers of the heart, said Megan Mitchell, a Cheney spokeswoman.

As a result, Cheney was scheduled to go to George Washington University Hospital in the afternoon for an outpatient procedure – an electrical shock – to restore his normal rhythm, Mitchell said. Cheney was remaining at the White House until time for the procedure, and participated in regular morning briefings with President Bush, among other duties.

Cheney told Bush of his condition. The president responded “like he would with any friend,” said spokesman Tony Fratto, by wishing the vice president well and telling him to “go and make sure the doctors do what they need to do.”

Later, in Ada, Mich., Bush told reporters he is confident Cheney is “going to be fine.”

Cheney also experienced atrial fibrillation in November 2007, and doctors also administered an electrical shock then. That irregular heartbeat was discovered while White House doctors were treating the vice president for a lingering cough from a cold.
 
Dr. Zayd Eldadah, director of cardiac arrhythmia research at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, said it’s not unusual for Cheney to have another such episode. An estimated 2.8 million Americans have atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heartbeat and one that is not life-threatening in itself.

“This kind of rhythm problem generally does keep coming back over time,” said Eldadah, who is not involved in Cheney’s care. “The natural history of atrial fibrillation in people who have heart disease and are older is that it keeps coming back, and generally comes back more frequently.”
  
The main risk from atrial fibrillation is not that Cheney will have another heart attack, but that he could eventually have a stroke if the rhythm problem is not treated.

Atrial fibrillation, also called A-fib, causes the upper chambers of the heart to quiver, instead of pump. As a result, some blood can pool in the heart. When blood settles, it tends to clot. And if those clots are then pumped out to the body, they can lodge in tiny blood vessels in the brain-causing a stroke.

The procedure Cheney was expected to undergo Wednesday afternoon is like resetting a computer, Eldadah explained. The vice president will be sedated, and an electrical charge will be delivered to his heart. “The heart will be turned off and on to reset it,” said Eldadah. “It’s a quick fix to restore normal rhythm.”
  
If the procedure doesn’t work, patients typically are put on blood thinners to prevent clotting.

“Atrial fibrillation in patients like Vice President Cheney is not a source of great worry or alarm,” said Eldadah. “It’s very treatable.”

Cheney has had four heart attacks, starting when he was 37 years old, and many related doctor and hospital visits over the years since. He has had quadruple bypass surgery and two artery-clearing angioplasties. In 2001, he had a special pacemaker implanted in his chest. The pacemaker’s battery was replaced last year, and then the entire device was replaced.

In 2005, he had surgery to repair an arterial aneurysm on the back of each knee.
  
In his checkup in July, doctors said Cheney’s heart was beating normally for a man of his age and health history.

The campaign event Cheney will miss is for Marty Ozinga, a wealthy suburban concrete company owner. Ozinga is running for the House against Democrat Debbie Halvorson, a high-ranking Illinois state senator.