DCist was watching the Michigan vs. Northwestern football game this afternoon at an L Street bar when ABC interrupted with a news flash that Vice President Cheney, who has survived four heart attacks, was at the George Washington University Hospital undergoing a host of tests due to shortness of breath.

When the Wolverines built up a comfortable lead by the fourth quarter (Michigan beat Northwestern, 42-20) we headed over to Washington Circle to see what was going on. And things were fairly quiet outside the Ronald Reagan Institute for Emergency Medicine, though there were a number of news crews parked on the sidewalk; camera operators were setting up tripods; and George Washington University undergrads looked a bit bewildered as they were walked by.

When DCist decided that there wasn't much to see, we got on a 30-series bus to take us uptown. But that's where the speculation of Cheney's death started to get whisked into a mini-frenzy.

At Wisconsin Avenue and Dumbarton Street, a man in a big dark scarf and fedora-like hat boarded the bus and said something to the driver about Cheney, though we couldn't hear exactly what was said. But when he took his seat, the man started talking to a fellow passenger about how the vice president "died."

"No?!?! Cheney's dead?" the passenger replied.

"Yeah, that's what da news sez."

"Wow. That's big. That's big."

Big indeed, we thought, thinking that we had missed out on a major piece of news while stuck on the bus in Georgetown traffic.

But as of 5 p.m., the Post is saying that there is nothing at the current time that is pointing to an immediate darkened fate for the vice president.

Mary Matalin, a former Cheney adviser, tells the Post that the outlook looks bright for the vice president.

"He's fine," Matalin said. "He's in his street clothes and walking from room to room for the tests. The tests he's taken so far are fine."

>> IsDickCheneyDeadYet.com