Thu Mar 6, 7:21 AM ET

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By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - An Internet lampoon of Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s wife is no laughing matter at the White House, which has asked a satirist to remove pictures of her — complete with red clown noses — from his Web site.

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But the New York Civil Liberties Union struck back Wednesday on behalf of John A. Wooden, 31, threatening a lawsuit to protect his First Amendment rights to parody the White House and Bush officials on his site, whitehouse.org.

The official White House site is whitehouse.gov.

Cheney counsel David S. Addington warned Wooden's Chickenhead Productions Inc. that Lynne V. Cheney's name and pictures — altered to show her with a red clown's nose and a missing tooth — could not be used to make money without her consent, and asked Wooden to delete the photos and "fictitious biographical statement about her."

Instead, Wooden cautioned Web site visitors that the vice president "wishes you to be aware ... that some/all of the biographic information contained on this PARODY page about Mrs. Cheney may not actually be true."

And, it added, the editors of the Web site were "confident that any rumors about Mrs. Cheney formerly being a crystal meth pusher are 100 percent likely to be absolutely untrue. Similarly, any stories about her penchant for licking brandy Alexanders off the hirsute belly of her spouse are all lies, lies, lies!"

NYCLU lawyer Chris Dunn wrote the office of the vice president that the material was "fully protected by the First Amendment."

"With everything happening in the world, you'd think the office of the vice president would have something more important to do than sending letters to political satirists," Wooden said.

A spokeswoman for Cheney's office, Jennifer Millerwise, confirmed the letter from Addington was authentic but said she otherwise had no comment.

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