(cg)Vice President Dick Cheney joked about West Virginians during a Monday talk at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. - and many West Virginia leaders didn't find it funny. Cheney was responding to his distant relationship to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate. "We'd always known about the Cheney family line on my father's side of the family, back to Massachusetts in the 1630s. My grandmother was named Tyler, but it turned out she was descended from a Richard Cheney ... who landed in Maryland in the 1650s," Cheney said. He then added, "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family, and we don't even live in West Virginia." After the audience laughed, Cheney added, "You can say those things when you're not running for re-election." West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin asked Cheney for an apology. "I truly cannot believe that any vice president of the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would make such a derogatory statement about my state or any state, for that matter.

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