It speaks… Cheney has a voice

THE US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, in one of the Bush Administration's sharpest rebukes to Moscow, accused Russia yesterday of backsliding on democracy and urged it to stop using energy supplies for "blackmail".

"Russia has a choice to make," Mr Cheney told Baltic and Black Sea leaders in Vilnius at a time of increasingly chilly relations between the US and Russia.

Good on old Dick. The problem is, of course, he is part of an administration which fails nearly every test of democracy and ethical behavior.