(Gulfnews) Though they may spar across the political aisle, Vice- President Dick Cheney is close enough to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to call him "cousin." Eighth cousin, that is.
Lynne Cheney, the vice-president's wife, revealed this tantalising bit of political trivia during a television interview on Tuesday.
She said she uncovered the long-ago ties between the two while researching her ancestry for her latest book, Blue Skies, No Fences, a memoir about growing up in Wyoming.
"This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family lines for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick's and Barack Obama's," Lynne Cheney told MSNBC.
According to her spokeswoman, Obama, an Illinois Democrat, is a descendant of Mareen Duvall. This French Huguenot's son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650's from England.
The vice-president's full name is Richard B. Cheney.