Cousin Dick and Cousin Barack

You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family.

I would never have guessed that Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are family.

Yes, they are very distant relatives; but they do share a branch on their family trees.

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.

...Mrs. Cheney told MSNBC on Tuesday that it was "an amazing American story that one ancestor ... could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths."

The common ancestor was Mareen Devall, who the Chicago Sun-Times said was a 17th century immigrant from France.

Mrs. Cheney said she discovered the link through family research for her new book, "Blue Skies, No Fences," about growing up in Wyoming.

That's wild.