US Vice President Dick Cheney was accused today by a top lawmaker from his own Republican party of obstructing a congressional probe into the legality of the US domestic spying program. In a letter to the vice president that he said was "neither pleasant nor easy" to write, US Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Mr Cheney of trying to dissuade members of the panel from agreeing to hold a closed door hearing on the program. Senator Specter has vowed to hold hearings into revelations about the secret compilation of phone records by the National Security...