Right. Cheney was either lying, or having a senior moment, when he denied having met John Edwards. They’d met at least twice face-to-face, and Edwards had voted in the Senate at least once while Cheney was presiding.
As to not having talked with Edwards, that might be true: Cheney, despite his whining about the lack of bipartisanship, meets only with Republican Senators. (More on this from Froomkin.)
And Cheney was just flat-out lying when he claimed that he was in the Senate “most Tuesdays,” unless 2 out of 127 is your idea of “most.”
And it’s not true that Edwards’s “hometown paper” has “taken to calling him ‘Senator Gone’.” (A thrice-weekly smalltown paper far from Edwards’s home used the phrase once more than a year ago, and isn’t pleased to have its words misrepresented.)
Fine. But isn’t it true that Edwards had a generally rotten attendance record?
No. In the four years before he started running for President, Edwards answered more than 99% of the roll-calls. Has he missed a lot of votes since? Sure. But that hardly sustains Cheney’s implication that he has been a slacker in the Senate.
Could Cheney have told any more lies in the amount of time he had? I really can’t see how.
My feeling is that we shouldn’t let up on this one. Cheney ought to be made to pay for his sheer impudence in telling such transparent whoppers, and Ken Mehlman for repeating one of them after it had already been shown to be false.
Update
There’s a nice video up on the DNC website, linking Cheney’s little lies about meeting Edwards with his big lies about Iraq.