From Al Kamen's In The Loop:

Double or Nothing

The White House's request that Vice President Cheney and President Bush be together to chat with the 9/11 commission has sparked the usual snarky and wholly unfair media commentary about how Bush needs Cheney to get his story straight.

It could well be the other way around, as former New Jersey governor and commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean told reporters Wednesday.

"Can you say why you would agree to have the vice president and the president testify at the same time?" New York Post reporter Vince Morris asked Kean. "It seems . . . it might be to allow, you know, Mr. Cheney to help Mr. Bush with the answers. . . . It seems like it compromises your investigation to have them answer questions at the same time."

"Well, we recognize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers," Kean said to "scattered laughter," according to a transcript. "But . . . it was the suggestion of the White House," Kean said, "and it seemed to us, in exchange for getting all 10 commissioners to be able to ask any questions" and to have a staffer in there as well, "that we'd get the answers to the questions we needed to write the report."

They are just so unfair.