While Vice President Dick Cheney was in the U.S. Senate the other day, to preside over business, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy made this broadside against Cheney's old company:

Our troops have also been tarnished by profiteering companies, none more brazen than Halliburton, which have reaped huge profits while our soldiers are risking their lives and losing their lives. Yet Republicans blocked Senate action to make war profiteering a crime and hold these people accountable...

I do not share that view, but what better evidence to fuel those charges than Halliburton’s non-competitive contracts and waste – it is fraud and abuse on a scale that would shock the conscience of anyone except perhaps an Enron executive?

Halliburton seems to regard the U.S. Treasury as its own personal bank account. With “cost plus” contracts, what do they care how much they overcharge the taxpayers? They are guaranteed their profits regardless. It is the antithesis of patriotism.

Presumably when Leahy is talking about Halliburton "war profiteers," he's not talking about these men.

It also seems as if Leahy got the memo from the Kerry campaign.

In any event, Leahy's remarks prompted a direct, off-color response from Cheney.

Perhaps, as Michelle Malkin says, the vice president "lost his cool." Maybe a better response would have been for Cheney to have yielded himself twenty minutes of time in the well of the Senate to respond - passionately - to Leahy's attack.

Vulgarity didn't hurt Jimmy Carter when he said, in 1980, "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass." It didn't hurt Bill Clinton, who, in a private conversation, tarred Mario Cuomo with mafia allegations and called him a "mean son of a bitch." So far, Kerry's f-bomb in describing the Bush Administration doesn't seem to have cost him anything.

When Cheney's remarks are put in context, it may wind up costing him even less.