Skeletons out of the closet

Just what The Bush Administration needs.

The President's grandpa was a graverobber -- maybe -- and the Vice President's lesbian daughter has written a memoir.

Is Tony Snow on the job yet?

Can't wait for Helen Thomas' next question.

"Mr. President, Mr. President! About your grandfather. Did he or did he not steal Geronimo's skull?"

Al Jazeera didn't report the ghoulish yarn about the theft of Geronimo's noggin. The Wall Street Journal did in its Monday editions.

An Apache chief, Geronimo died in 1909 and was buried at Fort Sill, Okla.

A 1918 letter, discovered in the Yale University archives, that was written by a Yalie who belonged to the secret "Skull & Bones society, reports the grave robbery:

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club,...is now safe inside" the Tomb, the society's headquarters in New Haven, Conn., wrote Yale student Winter Mead, the WSJ reported.

And you thought college boys back in the day confined their pranks to panty raids.

The director of the Fort Sill musem thinks the whole thing is a hoax. Native American leaders, predictably, are outraged. The Bush family ain't talking. Skull & Bones ain't talking because, after all, you can't be a real "secret society" if you talk to the media, which would blow the whole point of being a "secret society."

In 1986, though, Apache leaders say they received an anonymous package that contained a Skull & Bones society "log" describing the night Prescott Bush and others dug up Geronimo's body and swiped the skull. The package contained a photo of a skull in a display case, but when Apache leaders flew to New York to recover the Indian chief's remains, they say they were given a skull that appeared to be "too small" to be a grown man's, the WSJ reported.

Bait & switch? Is that worse than being an "Indian giver"?

Tribal leaders say they were offered the undersized skull in exchange for signing an agreement promising to keep quiet about the whole grave-robbing deal.

Unless we've missed it, the rest of the media has ignored the story, but we haven't been able to check Al Jazeera lately (we're behind on the cable bill; plus, no hablo the Arabic.)

Consequently, there's no way of knowing whether smearing President Bush's grandpa as a grave robber will have any effect on the plummeting opinion poll numbers of the president.

If that doesn't worsen the numbers, maybe the new memoir by Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter will strike the final, crushing blow to the American public's sinking opinion about their chosen leaders.

Mary Cheney was a good daughter during the 2004 re-election campaign, staying off stage and in the background. Her non-appearance even worked to Bush/Cheney's advantage when Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry "outed" her during on the debates.

Now, with no presidential re-election in sight and only the growing possibility of a mid-term Republican slaughter on the horizon, all bets are off.

Mary's book is titled "Now It's My Turn."

Dick Cheney, President Bush an all Republican congressmen coming up for re-election must be doing cartwheels.