Don't overfill a full plate

Dick Cheney has not emerged from government service as the most popular man in the world. He has filled many jobs, as congressman from Wyoming, Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford, then later he was Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush, and vice president under the most recent George Bush.

He is an opinionated man, whom opponents sometimes consider nasty when he directs his outspoken variety of dissenting attacks against the current administration. Most recently he has sent forth his own idea that President Obama has dealt poorly with American security and that his own methods were superior in preventing further terrorism from Al Queda.

Problem is that some of the modes of obtaining information from captured terrorists used by Bush-Cheney involved methods that were said to be torture and were thus illegal.

This was compounded by the erroneous method of their being declared constitutional by presidential counsel, thus rendering the whole affair as a manipulation of due process and the abeyance of the rule of law. Came the loud and one-sided declaration of Mr. Cheney that his mode of obtaining information probably saved many American lives and predicted we would be assailed again if Obama and his advisers were to continue their denial of his own probity.

The writer is no fan of Dick Cheney. He is using his freedom of speech to emit his mode of establishing his own legacy, and that right is not doing any real harm. Those who are raising the hue and cry to investigate and prosecute him and his fellows are denying him the right of free speech and we accordingly call for closing the noise and harmful chatter and letting the new president attend to the urgent matters that clutter his daily agenda. Serve the full plate with bipartisan harmony, and let the former VP have his say. (Who needs to listen?)