Dissing Cousins: Cheney & Obama Are Kin!

Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama have an unlikely bond. They are eighth cousins, according to Cheney's wife, Lynne. She discovered the two share a common 17th Century ancestor in French Huguenot Mareen Duvall, whose son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney in Maryland in the 1650s, she told MSNBC.

Lynne Cheney discovered the bizarre link while researching her memoir about growing up in Wyoming. "This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor could be responsible down the family lines for lives that have taken such different and varied paths," she said. Obama's tongue-in-cheek response: "Every family has a black sheep." (More Dick Cheney stories.)