So now US vice president Dick Cheney has come out gun blazing, attacking Sarbanes-Oxley!

Might have something to do with next week's elections and attempts to shore up the business vote.

In an interview on CNBC, released by the White House, Cheney said the post-Enron reforms were over the top:

"I think you can make a case that Sarbanes-Oxley went too far. The fact of the matter is, the things - when we had, for example, Enron and WorldCom, the problems that developed from the standpoint of those companies, those activities were illegal before there was any additional regulation put in place. People have been prosecuted; people are going to jail for the crimes they committed.

"But we have to be very careful about slapping on new regulations or trying to respond to the political pressures of the moment by making life even more burdensome than we have. And I am generally not a big advocate of regulation. You need a certain amount, obviously, and you need a certain amount of oversight by government authorities, but we have to be very careful here not to choke off the creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of the American economy."

Yeah right. But then, this is the man who famously told the world: "Donald Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had." The same one who claimed US troops in Iraq would be greeted as liberators and who played down the insurgency there, claiming it was in its last throes.

Cheney always seems to be on another planet. And whatever he might say about Sarbanes-0xley, the question remains whether Sarbanes-Oxley will be changed at all if the Democrats take control of either House.

While some commentators see bipartisan support for watering it down, the picture is not that clear, according to this news report.

And if the outcome of the elections does determine the future of Sarbanes-Oxley, it's no surprise that Cheney is now attacking the legislation.

Yes, the same law that came in four years ago when, despite the distractions posed by the war on terrorism and the-then potential war on Iraq, President Bush declared a new war on American business criminals: "In the aftermath of September 11, we refuse to allow fear to undermine our economy. And we will not allow fraud to undermine it either." Remember that?

So now Cheney tells us that was going a bit too far.