The phrase that will always be associated with Vice President Dick Cheney is "undisclosed location." Whenever there is a crisis in government, that's where Cheney is. Whenever anyone in Congress needs Cheney to answer questions, he is out at Rancho Undisclosed. Apparently, the undisclosed location is often just his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, but he reflexively does not want that fact revealed.

He doesn't want any facts revealed. He wants to avoid at all costs the notion that he is working for the American people and is thus accountable to them in any way. At a time when governmental transparency is all the rage, he seeks governmental opacity. He's trying for the perks of dictatorship without the requisite infrastructure -- and, most of the time, he's getting those perks. He rules with an iron fist in an iron glove.

His mania for secrecy is unsurpassed. In 2001, he headed a task force to develop energy policy for the then-new Bush administration. The Government Accountability Office sought to know the names of the members of the task force. The vice president said no. His office has refused to comply with ethics laws requiring disclosure of travel paid for by special interests. In 2004, he refused to provide Congress with the names of the people who worked for him. He refused to provide a list of visitors to his official residence.

And now, he has unilaterally exempted his office from rules regarding the safeguarding of classified documents. His justification is that the vice president's office is not an "entity within the executive branch." His reasoning: Because the vice president presides over the Senate when he wants to and breaks ties when he has to, he is really a member of legislative branch -- not that he follows the rules of that branch either. In essence, he is now the fourth branch of government.

Soon, civics classes will be taught a revised version of our precious system of checks and balances. There's the administrative, the legislative, the judicial and the cheney. The exact function and duties of the cheney are unknown. The cheney does not report to the president because that would be a violation of the separation of powers. The cheney just does what it does because it is what it is.

And you'd best not ask questions. When the Information Security Oversight Committee of the National Archives made the initial request for information, the cheney tried to have the committee abolished. The cheney sounds more like a department at Hogwarts than an agency of government. Inside the cheney, all is darkness.

In other bad news: China has decided to build a 67-mile road to the glacier at the foot of Mount Everest. This is such an obviously bad idea that I had to check to make sure I wasn't being taken in by another brilliant Onion parody. But no, the road is real. It's being built, say the Chinese, in order to facilitate the carrying of the Olympic torch to the top of the mountain.

Clearly, the building of the road would damage an already fragile ecosystem. Also, it would make it easier for tourists to come see the mountain, which would further trash the Himalayan high country. It would put more pressure on the high glaciers, which are already under attack by global warming.

While it's not saying so out loud, another reason China wants to build the road is to reinforce its hegemony in Tibet. We're here and we're in charge and if we want to build a road, we're going to build that road. China is the cheney of nations.

It's odd how excited China is about the Olympics. It's good in a way -- the air will be cleaner in Beijing, and political dissidents will be released, and the press will be sort of free at least for a few weeks. I'm not sure why China cares. It's a large and powerful nation, fiercely independent in many ways, and yet it was almost wiggling with gratitude when that bunch of aging plutocrats on the Olympic committee graciously consented to allow it to spend a billion dollars or so to get a huge and often irrelevant sporting event.

It's not clear whether the Olympics provide any benefit at all to the host city. The idea is that the city gets back in tourist money and private investment what it spends in capital improvements, but it's really a crapshoot. Then there's the "validation" provided by the Olympics, although validation of what by whom is very murky. Look, we're in the community of nations -- we hosted the 3-meter springboard competition! The pentathlon, c'est moi.

It's as though China were attracted by the lure of the West almost in spite of itself. So here's the news flash: Building a road to Mount Everest is not going to yield good publicity. The photos of bulldozers tearing up the glaciers will not go over well. Time to reconsider.

Bad things happen in the world, and often there are bad people involved. Not that I want to spoil your day, but you needed to know that.