The Other White House Family Dynasty

There were some eyebrows raised last month when Elizabeth Cheney, the Vice-President's daughter, was appointed to the second-ranking US diplomatic post for the Middle East.

Now her husband, Cheney's lobbyist son-in-law Philip Perry, has been handed the key post of general counsel of the Homeland Security Department.

Philip Perry has most recently been working as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, who have won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts in the past two years, including contracts to train airport security screeners and help build Coast Guard cutters and helicopters.

Now Perry will be overseeing the 1500 Homeland Security lawyers who work on legal matters like... well, Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration. What a coincidence!

Perry's work for Lockheed Martin included negotiating "legal protection from Homeland Security to cover a computer system at the center of an aviation-screening program that culls records to determine whether a traveler might be a terrorist threat." In other words, they get millions of taxpayer dollars to build a terrorist screening system, but if it doesn't actually work - hey! Don't blame us!

So here's how it's gonna work, see? Dick tells George what's happening next, someone raises legal concerns, Dick checks with Phil who says it's all OK by him... If this sort of cronyism was happening in Mexico, for example, the world would scoff at it.