In an interview with Fortune Magazine’s Nina Easton, Dick Cheney conceded that as Halliburton CEO he opposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, even though he now strongly supports them. Cheney explained that as a private sector official, he didn’t have any responsibility to be concerned about the impact of his company’s dealings with Iran:

Q: You opposed unilateral sanctions on Iran when you were CEO of Halliburton.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I did.

[...]

That’s a whole set of considerations that a CEO doesn’t have to worry about, that a private company doesn’t have to worry about. But the President of the United States does.

What Cheney conveniently neglects to mention is that Halliburton evaded U.S. law in order to deal with Iran. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorizes the president to block transactions and freeze assets to deal with rogue nations. In 1995, President Clinton signed an executive order barring U.S. investment in Iran’s energy sector. To evade U.S. law, Halliburton set up an offshore subsidiary that engaged in dealings with Iran.

In 1996, Cheney blasted the Clinton administration for being “sanction-happy as a government.” “The problem is that the good Lord didn’t see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments,” Cheney explained of his desire to do business with Iran.

ABC’s Sam Donaldson confronted Cheney about this in 2000, only to hear Cheney obfuscate about his dealings with Iran:

DONALDSON: I’m told, and correct me if I’m wrong, that Halliburton through subsidiary companies was actually trying to do business with Iraq.

CHENEY: No. No, I had a firm policy that we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal. What we do with respect to Iran and Libya is done through foreign subsidiaries totally in compliance with U.S. law.

DONALDSON: Make a way around U.S. law?

CHENEY: No, no, it’s provided for us specifically with respect to Iran and Libya. Iraq’s different, but we’ve not done any business in Iraq since the sanctions were imposed, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn’t do that.

Cheney’s evasion of U.S. law to deal with Iran has been well-documented. As the Bush administration now presses for tougher sanctions against Iran, Cheney should concede that Halliburton violated the spirit of the law and encourage other U.S. companies not to follow his lead.

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Responding to a July interview on CNBC in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she doesn’t have a blackberry because “they don’t let me play with almost anything technological now,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request “seeking documents stating the Department of State’s policies governing the Secretary of State’s methods of communicating via e-mail with audiences both internal and external to the U.S. government.”

In a new interview with Fortune magazine, Vice President Cheney says that the government shouldn’t intervene to curb predatory lending practices because it would interfere with the “working of the markets“:

“The fact is, the markets work, and they are working,” said Cheney in an interview in his White House office. “And people – some of the big companies obviously – have taken risks. Risk means risk. And there’s an upside as well as a downside in some of the choices they’ve made. We have to be careful not to have this set of developments lead us to significantly expand the role of government in ways that may do damage long-term for the economy.”

The same goes for Democratic efforts to curb the predatory lending practices that left naive homeowners in trouble, says Cheney: “We don’t want to interfere with the basic, fundamental working of the markets.”

A few nights before the interview, “Cheney had dinner with [Alan] Greenspan at the home of friend, mentor, and deposed Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.”

The New York Times reports that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has an “unusually tight bond” with President Bush, which she has used to “gain control over the national security process.” But Bush hasn’t always been receptive to her suggestions of increased international diplomacy:

In recent months, Ms. Rice has gone so often to Mr. Bush to push him on diplomacy with Iran and North Korea that he has started to needle her that she expects him to talk to people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical Islamist who is president of Iran, or Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader whom Mr. Bush has said he loathes.

“You want me to sit down with Ahmadinejad?” a White House official recalled that Mr. Bush had archly asked Ms. Rice. “Kim Jong-il? Is he next?”

Steve Benen and Jason Zengerle have more.

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In a press conference this afternoon in Mississippi, Sen. Trent Lott said that the looming ethics restrictions “didn’t have a big role” in his decision to retire. He added that he has spoken with former Senate colleagues who tell him “a lot of what you do anyways is involved with consulting rather than direct lobbying.” Lott said he has no opportunities lined up at this time, but he floated the idea of perhaps returning to work for a Mississippi law firm. Watch it:

Here’s Mike Huckabee with a much more banal ad than his earlier Chuck Norris episode:

Ambinder remarks that the faith appeals aren’t subtle, but as he says in a follow-up I think there are several subtle appeals to anti-Mormon sentiment here. The “Christian Leader” text seems like an effort to appeal to the notion that Mormons (i.e., Mitt Romney) aren’t Christians. Similarly, when he says “I don’t have to wake up every day wondering ‘what do I need to believe’” he’s specifically taking aim at Multiple Choice Mitt. And, indeed, even the distinction between being influenced by faith (which Huckabee rejects) and being defined by it (which he embraces) seems aimed at Romney. Rudy Giuliani’s politics are obviously pretty independent on his Catholic faith, since he doesn’t agree with them on the issues where the Pope’s on the right or on the issues where the Pope’s on the left.

Romney, by contrast, has been trying to seize the mantle of faith, noting the shared political principles of Mormons and Evangelical Christians. But Romney can’t run a candidacy defined by faith anywhere outside of Utah. I tend to think Andrew’s been too quick at times to raise the alarm bells about “Christianism,” but with this add Huckabee really does seem to me to be flirting with an argument like “you should vote for me because we have the same theology” rather than a more generic religion-infused moral appeal.