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He's way too unpopular to consider for the second slot on the McCain ticket, but is a cabinet post for Dick Cheney as energy czar out of the question if the Republicans prevail in November?

After the roll out last week of McCain's drill-drill-drill energy policy, it's pretty likely. Backed by the full might of the Republican message machine, McCain's energy proposals were lifted wholesale out of the Dick Cheney energy strategy that has guided US policy since 2001.

It's the policy that was developed by National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a group created by President Bush two weeks after he first took office and placed under Cheney's direction, whose secret deliberations have been a source of controversy ever since.

It's the policy that found expression in the Energy Act of 2005, passed by Congress. And it's the policy described concisely on the web site of the Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force, a group within the Department of Energy, created by the Energy Act of 2005.

In its official documents, The Task Force spells out what the fossil future is supposed to look like according to the energy security gospel of Dick Cheney. At the top of the list of things needed to develop energy sources for the future? Development of the oil shale deposits in the American West.

That's exactly what McCain proposed last week.

So if elected, why wouldn't he provide a cabinet appointment to the dark visionary and architect of America's endless fossil future?

Cheney ain't the decider, but he's certainly the go-to guy.