Crime Family

"President Bush has nominated the vice president's son-in-law, Philip Perry, as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, where he will oversee 1,500 lawyers who work on legal matters such as Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration. Perry currently works on the other side of that fence: he's a lobbyist with the law firm Latham & Watkins, where he was a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, one of the top contractors for Homeland Security. While he was lobbyist, the company won hundreds of millions of dollars in government money for homeland security services and products. Perry has made a nice career out of marrying the vice president's daughter, this being his third Bush administration appointment. Before his current stint as a lawyer and Lockheed Martin lobbyist, Perry was general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget and, before that, acting associate attorney general at the Justice Department. Apparently, it's not a bad career move to be related to the vice president. Elizabeth Cheney, Perry's wife, was appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month to be the second-ranking U.S. diplomat for the Mideast. Cheney's other daughter, Mary, on Tuesday signed with Bush strategist Mary Matalin's conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster to pen a book on being "a political target for the other side."