I'm sure that you all have heard that Dick Cheney shot a man while quail hunting. It invites a million jokes - that he shot Dan Quayle, that he got some bad intelligence and thought Harry Whittington was from Al Qaeda, that all along it was Cheney with the WMDs, 'Cheney's Got a Gun'...ah, the jokes go on and on. Imagine Leno and Letterman tonight. Mostly Letterman because I can't stand Leno.
But thing that surprises me is that it took so long for the White House to say something about it. Actually, they never reported it - they waited for the owner of the property to report it. As Dan Froomkin, one of the Washington Posts few good writers, shows the media is a bit confused by this also.
And from the NYTimes:
White House officials did not release details of the accident. But Katharine Armstrong, who was with the hunting party at the time of the shooting, said that Mr. Cheney, 65, fired his shotgun without realizing that Mr. Whittington had approached the group, hitting him on his right side, on his cheek, neck and chest.[...]
Asked why the vice president's office had made no announcement about the accident, [Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride] said, "We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch."
Yeah. That doesn't make much sense to me. The Vice President of the United States shoots someone, and the White House decides to defer to a property owner. It wasn't just a graze or something - it put Whittington in the ICU. But the White House decides they'll defer to the property owner? Why?
Scott McLellan had some heavy questions today. From Raw Story:
Q Let's just be clear here. The vice president of the United States accidentally shoots a man, and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper and not the White House press corps at large, or notify the public in a national way?
MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I think we all know that once it is made public, then it's going to be news and all of you are going to be seeking that information. And the Vice President's Office was ready to provide additional information to reporters. There was no traveling White House press corps with the vice president, as there is with the president in a situation like this.
And that's the tame part of the press conference.
President Bush was told about the shooting the night before - but that's it. He wasn't told that Cheney shot a guy, just about a shooting. So the press can't be too mad - they didn't even tell Cheney's boss what happened!
As if there isn't enough going wrong with this administration right now...they bungle Katrina, Iraq, and now Cheney shooting a guy.
I believe the NY Times headline was "He's a Tough Man"
and I would add "...when he has a gun"
What happened to using the safety switch?
Sounds like someone need to go back to Hunter safety school.
Do thosse of you who are older remember when they introduced this measure? Along with boating school and other "schools" for normal things parents used to have to teach.
We're moving away from expecting the parents to do anything....mainly because some can't and others shouldn't...."gig" digggg