I put this in the "Department of the Unattended Bag" with the provision that the bag(s) in question are the apparently vacant nutsacks of the press corps travelling with Dear Vice-Leader.

From today's Disrespectful Dan Froomkin, of the washingtonpost.com, not to be confused with the notably nutless Washington Post print edition:

How Cheney Flies

Nedra Pickler writes for the Associated Press with more tidbits from Cheney's recent trip. I mentioned on Monday that for the flight into Baghdad, the Air Force loaded an Airstream trailer into the belly of a C-17 cargo plane for Cheney and his top aides.

Pickler has more on that and on how during the flight home last night on his traditional 757, most of the electric outlets went on the fritz.

"Working passengers began lining up their laptops to share the power from a couple of working outlets - particularly the reporters who urgently needed to prepare their articles to transmit during a quick refueling stop in England.

"But when Cheney said his iPod needed to be recharged, it took precedence above all else and dominated one precious outlet for several hours. The vice president's press staff intervened so a reporter could use the outlet for 15 minutes to charge a dead laptop, but then the digital music device was plugged back in."

Sometimes it isn't the big, dramatic, unconstitutional, outrageous, civil-liberty-infringing, defensively worthless, deadly, or just flagrantly illegal stuff they do that matters.

No, it's the petty little shit that tells you what they're really all about.

(And could some iPod owners give us some idea of how long these things really take to recharge? Somehow "several hours" seems a bit excessive, not that we would dream of accusing Vice Dear Leader of leaving his princely toys in the charger longer than necessary just to make a few dick-waving points with the peasantry of the press.)