This probably wins some kind of prize for "not mentioning race:"

Cheney and Obama are distant cousins: Mrs. Cheney - Yahoo! News

Tue Oct 16, 6:01 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There's no sign of a family reunion planned, but U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are distant cousins.

So says the vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, who said she discovered that her husband of 43 years is eighth cousins with the senator from Illinois.

The two men could hardly be more different. Cheney is an advocate for pursuing the war in Iraq to try to stabilize the country, while Obama wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.

One of the more striking ways the two men are different is that one is black and the other is white. Years ago, Ishmael Reed wrote that if Alex Haley had traced his father’s rather than his mother’s "roots," "he would have traveled 12 generations back to, not Gambia, but Ireland.” That's what's happening here, although obviously in this case it's Obama's mother whose ancestors came from Ireland. But I repeat, it's amazing that they don't mention the most striking, and politically important, distinction between Cheney and Obama, even though there is a photograph.