CHENEY BREAKS LONGSTANDING 1804 RECORD OF LAST V.P. TO SHOOT A GUY WHILE IN OFFICE (From the Associated Press) A professional historians group announced Monday that Vice President Dick Cheney is the winner of the prestigious Aaron Burr Award given to U.S. Vice Presidents who shoot a guy while in office. Professor Merrill Fainsworth, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and President of the American Historians Society, announced the award. Professor Fainsworth said: "When Mr. Cheney came into office he seemed unlikely to shoot anyone at all given the lengths he had gone to to avoid fighting in Vietnam. But his actions of the past week have exceeded all hopes. That the victim is a lawyer is just the icing on the cake." The award is named after Aaron Burr, until Monday the only previous recipient of the coveted award. In 1804 while serving as Thomas Jefferson's Vice President, Burr participated in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey in which he shot and killed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, a fact not lost on current Treasury Secretary John Snow. Vice President Cheney is always polite and professional," Snow said in a telephone interview. "But I get the feeling that every time he looks at me he sees another notch on his shotgun. The other night I was working late at the Treasury Department when I noticed the doorknob to my office turning slowly. It turned out to be the cleaning staff but I nearly had a stroke."