Cheney hospitalized for heart problems?

That's the big headline on the Huffington Post. I can find nothing about this story on CNN, MSNBC or Fox, though Huffington links to an innocuous AP item about the VP visiting on orthopedic surgeon, supposedly for a football injury, which she claims is a cover story. Even Drudge has nothing, but Arianna is running with it: "What is the White House hiding?"

Why is the White House still insisting that the only health issue Vice President Cheney dealt with today is an old football injury to his knee, visiting renowned orthopedist Dr. Richard Steadman? At the Vail Valley Institute dinner tonight, I kept asking what those in the know here knew. Little by little, here is the story I pieced together: After the Secret Service secured the Vail Valley Medical Center, including the parking lot, the Vice President arrived under his own power and checked in at the orthopedic center under the name “Dr. Hoffman”. He was immediately whisked to the adjacent cardiac unit, suffering from what was described to me as “an angina attack”. The security was so high that a Secret Service agent wouldn’t let an ER nurse out of the bathroom that she had gone into just before the Veep arrived. “Get back in there,” the agent told her. Confounded, she called her husband on her cell phone, telling him “something big” was going on. And indeed it was… but you wouldn’t know it from the White House. It appears that not only doesn’t the public deserve to know what is really going on in Iraq (“last throes”?) we don’t deserve to know what is going on with our Vice President’s health.

If this rumor turns out to be true, it is not surprising in the least that the Secret Service would be keeping a lid on it for security reasons while he was there. Cheney's heart problems are not exactly a state secret, but if it turns out he made an unscheduled visit to a heart specialist, the White House would be smart to keep thir spin close to the truth. If Cheney's health is worsening there is a likelihood he would have to step down as VP, and the administration would need to have its ducks in a row regarding succession. As Drudge would say, "Developing..."

If you have the stomach for it, read the comments section, where the majority appears to have nothing but contempt and ill will for a sitting vice president of the US. Cheney hatred seems to run almost as rampant as Bush hatred. Quite a contrast from the reaction of conservatives during Clinton's heart surgery, who largely wished him a speedy recovery.

UPDATE: More from Michelle Malkin, Jeff Quinton and Marc Cooper.

ANOTHER UPDATE: From the Jawa Report we learn that Arianna has removed the offensive comments, which is of course her right (and maybe her obligation, if she cares at all about decent standards of behavior). I would do the same in her position. Of course, she probably realizes just how over-the-top her readers look to the rest of us.