Cheney slips decorum in the Senate

So Cheney confronts Pat Leahy on his comments on Halliburton, and Leahy retorts that he doesn't enjoy Cheney labelling him as a "bad Catholic" based on his voting record, and Cheney lets loose with the F-word at the junior Senator from Vermont.

"So what?" you say. It's nothing you wouldn't expect from most people when things get heated.

Something I haven't seen in ANY of the news reports on this -- probably because journalists are too damn ignorant to remember it -- is that Cheney as VP is *PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE* and his animosity to a particular member of the Senate is tantamount to harassment.

As WorldIQ observes in their description of the VP's role:

As President of the Senate (Article I, Section 3), the Vice President oversees procedural matters and is given the ability to cast a vote in the event of a tie. There is a strong convention within the U.S. Senate that the Vice President not use his position as President of the Senate to influence the passage of legislation or act in a partisan manner, except in the case of breaking tie votes. In fact, the Vice President is constitutionally prevented from voting except in the case of ties.

This makes Cheney's action the rough equivalent of a CEO cussing out a member of the executive committee in front of his peers.