Month: February 2006

“I shot a lawyer and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

The public probably received the closest replica of a mea culpa that will ever be delivered by Vice President Dick Cheney over his shooting in South Texas of bird hunting partner, Harry Whittingon, on Saturday.

Cheney appeared last evening for an interview on Fox News, big surprise there. During the interview he took responsibility for shooting his friend while hunting and said how the news was given to the press was handled correctly. Also, no big surprise.

I’m sure that die-hard fans and true believers of Dick Cheney and the Bush administration are probably bouncing off the walls with glee. In essence, Cheney told the media to get hosed, a sentiment that resonates with many Bush-Cheney supporters. I guess from that point of view maybe Cheney did the right thing for his side. But there comes a point in time where obstinacy and arrogance becomes just pure stupidity. One has to wonder if the vice president’s actions are the right ones for his party, coming from an administration that seems to keep shooting itself in the foot, metaphorically speaking. The problem for the Republican party is that the self-inflicted foot shooting has become closer to reality than metaphor.

I don’t care one way or the other. Entertainment is about the best we can expect out of Washington these days.

An astute observation made by my old friend Bruce of Collin County, Texas (Yes, THAT Bruce!):

“Cheney is NOT a heartbeat away from the presidency- he is a PACEMAKER
beat away. W could slide him past the ol’ microwave and fix all that in
a heartbeat… er, whatever.”

I’m putting my shotgun in the closet. I’d hate like hell to be Cheneyed.

Think about it. It might not be too long before you hear people saying this:

“Hey, watch it with that gun asshole. What are you trying to do, Cheney me?”

Being “Cheneyed” or “Don’t Cheney me” may be part of the language someday. It’s unfortunate enough that the vice (no comment) president shot his 78-year-old friend while hunting quail on a South Texas ranch. Now I hear the victim, Austin attorney Harry Whittington, suffered a heart attack from some of the birdshot that lodged in his heart. Damn. I guess being perceived as a modern-day Darth Vader when it comes to starting wars and endangering civil liberties isn’t enough for Dick Cheney. He must, honest-to-God, want to be another Aaron Burr. I wonder if a treason trial is in his future like Burr’s? It could happen, given the suspicions about his alleged role in the CIA leak case. It could happen when pigs fly in a frozen hell.

I was working this afternoon and didn’t have a chance to check out the latest news on the ‘net until I watched the network news on TV just a few minutes ago. That’s when I heard about Whittington having a heart attack because the vice president shot him. Damn, I leave the world an hour or so and the whole damn operation falls apart! This is pretty danged surreal.

A while ago I read the transcript of today’s White House press briefing in which our favorite flak Scotty McClellan got his ass handed to him by the White House press corps. Quite a lot of righteous indignation was in that room today, I’d say. But then that is what the White House press corps is best at — righteous indignation.

The proverbial WH press corps’ nose was out of joint over it taking almost 24 hours before anyone in the media knew Vice President Dick Cheney had shot someone. Even though the man Cheney shot while hunting birds in South Texas is okay, it’s still news. We’ve not had a U.S. vice president shoot anyone since 1804 when Vice President Aaron Burr gunned down Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Funny, we don’t see Burr’s likeness on any of our paper money and we’re likely not to see Cheney’s. Nevertheless, the press could see no good reason to delay the news of the Cheney faux pas by almost a day. And, I’m inclined to agree.

Perhaps a lot of the press indignation was over the principle of the matter. It is yet one more in a long list of attempts to control the flow of information by a control-freak White House. But I have to think too that maybe there is just a wee bit of jealousy as well from the RIWHPC (Righteously-indignant White House press corps). After all, it was reporter Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times who got the call from Anne Armstrong that Cheney had shot Harry Whittington with birdshot. It was on Armstrong’s ranch where the shooting took place and she was also a witness to the shooting. Powell had built up a good reporter-source relationship with the Armstrong family, longtime, rich South Texas ranchers, and those connections paid off in one hell of a scoop for a medium-sized daily like the Caller-Times.

As someone who has worked as a reporter for papers of that size and smaller, and who had to occasionally brush elbows with the RIWHPC in Crawford, I can only say: “Way to go Jaime.”

Oh my. It is just almost too easy what Vice President Dick Cheney handed those of us who like to skewer the powerful, political and the politically powerful.

If you were in a coma yesterday or today, you might not know that Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old Austin lawyer friend on a ranch in South Texas while they were hunting quail. This is, of course, not funny. The lawyer reportedly spent some time in ICU in a Corpus Christi hospital after being pelleted by birdshot from the shotgun fired by the man who is just a heartbeat away from the presidency.

But even if you have no sense of humor, or whimsy, or irony whatsoever you just have to say: “Whoa. Dude!”

First, consider that both Democrats and some Republicans have begun asking questions about the vice president’s role in the CIA leak scandal. This comes in light of revelations that Cheney’s indicted, former chief of staff Scooter “Dooter” Libby has indicated he was told by superiors to leak information to reporters to bolster the case for the Iraq war. Some politicians are now saying the special prosecutor in the case needs to question Cheney (Libby’s superior). Of course, I think the VP being questioned is not likely, especially in light of these events in Texas. I mean, he’s already shot one lawyer …

Also, there is this six degrees of separation element at work here. The lawyer Cheney shot, Harry Whittington, was an ally of President Bush when the latter man was governor. President George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney to be his vice president. President George Herbert Walker Bush chose Dan Quayle as his vice president. Both George W. and George Herbert Walker Bush are Texas residents. Cheney shot the president’s lawyer friend in Texas. Both Cheney and his friend were hunting quail, which is a homophone of the name of the elder Bush’s vice president.

Coincidence? I think not.