Giving an extreme conservative like Cheney a gun is like giving a 16 year old keys to your sports car..you know an accident is bound to happen at some point..you just don't know when.
__________________ If knowledge is power..how come we have so many idiots in charge?!!
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Wonder when will it'll all be over...
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True. In fact, on the news here it filled the slot at the end of the news hour usually reserved for topical/humorous stories. The ones no one ever watch. I suspect they only showed it so they could display the picture of Cheney in a big squishy orange hunting vest.
Apparently lawyer whoever (age 78) was hit in the head and shoulder by shotgun pellets while out bird shooting with Cheney on a Texas ranch. Didn't know lawyers still went shooting at that age. He is expected to make a full recovery.
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From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.
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No the real humour is that.....it was an accident...oh my god someone shot someone else by accident...bi9t he's a politican, so lets make a big deal out of it.
No, the real humor is that the heir to the presidential position, the man who is one heartbeat away from becoming the commander and chief of the biggest army and one of the largest (the largest) nuclear arsenals in the world, cannot even handle a musket properly. Hahahahaha...ha...ha ... ... ha?
You're right, not funny.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
More Questions Raised About Delay in Reporting Cheney Misfire
By Greg Mitchell
Published: February 12, 2006 10:20 PM ET updated Monday
NEW YORK The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the Vice President of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious late Sunday. E&P has learned that the official confirmation of the shooting came about only after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property where the shooting occured and called Vice President Cheney's office for confirmation.
The confirmation was made but it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter, Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, had not received word from the ranch owner.
One of Powell's colleagues at paper, Beth Francesco, told E&P that Powell had built up a strong source relationship with the prominent ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, which led to the tip. Powell is chief political reporter for the paper and also covers the area where the ranch is located south of Sarita, about 60 miles from Corpus Christi. Armstrong did not notify reporters at larger papers in Dallas, Houston, Austin or other cities.
Armstrong called the paper Sunday morning looking for Powell, who was not at work. When they did talk, Armstrong revealed the shooting of prominent Austin attorney Harry Whittington, who is now in stable condition in a hospital. Powell then called Cheney's office for the confirmation around midday. The newspaper broke the story at mid-afternoon--not a word about it had appeared before then.
The Cheney spokesman Powell spoke with, Lea Anne McBride, would not comment on whether the Cheney office or the White House would have ever released the information had the Caller-Times not contacted them.
"I’m not going to speculate," McBride said, according to Powell. "When you put the call into me, I was able to confirm that account."
Francesco, at the Corpus Christi paper, said she felt it was a bit odd that her newsroom had not received any information about the shooting since "we often call law enforcement in area, even on weekends. We checked in and didn’t hear anything about it." In some states, all serious shooting incidents must be immediately reported to police.
Hopsital officials on Monday continued to offer few details on the victim's condition, but said he was "very stable" and that pellets were possibly still being removed. Sally Whittington told The Dallas Morning News her father was being observed because of swelling from some of the welts on his neck. His face "looks like chicken pox, kind of," she said.
A hospital spokesman said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warranted it, but he didn't elaborate. Whittington sent word that he would have no comment on the incident out of respect for Cheney.
While E&P was first to raise questions about the delay Sunday afternoon, Frank James, reporter in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau, put his own spin on it later in the day, asking, "How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today?"
Indeed, others raised questions as well. "There was no immediate reason given as to why the incident wasn't reported until Sunday," The Dallas Morning News observed. "The sheriff's office in Kenedy County did not respond to phone calls Sunday."
The president, who was at the White House over the weekend, was informed about the incident in Texas after it happened Saturday by Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and was updated on Sunday, press secretary Scott McClellan said.
But neither the White House nor the vice president's staff announced the shooting. The Washington Post reported late Sunday that Cheney's office did not make a public announcement.
Asked by The New York Times why it did not make the news known, Cheney spokeswoman McBride said, "We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch."
Armstrong said later, according to The Associated Press, that everyone at the ranch was so "focused" on Whittington's health Saturday that it wasn't until Sunday she called the Caller-Times to report the accident.
In an odd disparity, Armstrong told the Houston Chronicle that Whittington, 78, was "bruised more than bloodied" in the incident and "his pride was hurt more than anything else." Yet he was airlifted to a hospital and has spent more than a day in an intensive care unit.
The Chronicle also reports Monday that hunting accidents are amazingly rare in Texas. In 2004, it said, the state's 1 million-plus hunters were involved in only 29 hunting-related accidents (19 involving firearms), four of which were fatal.
Time magazine on its Web site observed that Cheney is scheduled to join President Bush on Monday afternoon when he takes questions from reporters in the Oval Office, following a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. "White House aides can be expected to say that the Vice President did not shoot Whittington, which suggests a bullet, but rather sprayed him with birdshot, a type of ammunition made up of tiny pieces of lead or steel," Time predicted.
On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune's James wrote on the Washington bureau's blog at the newspaper's site, "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?
"The vice president is well-known for preferring to operate in secret....Some secrecy, especially when it comes to the executing the duties of president or vice president, is understandable and expected by Americans.
"But when the vice president's office, or the White House, delays in reporting a shooting like Saturday's to the public via the media, it needlessly raises suspicions and questions of trust. And it may just further the impression held by many, rightly or wrongly, that the White House doesn't place the highest premium on keeping the public fully and immediately informed."
The New York Times reported late Sunday that Whittington was commissioner of the state's Funeral Service Commission. In 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, named Whittington to head the Commission, which licenses and regulates funeral directors and embalmers in the state. "When he was named," The Times revealed, "a former executive director of the commission, Eliza May, was suing the state, saying that she had been fired because she investigated a funeral home chain that was owned by a friend of Mr. Bush.
"The suit was settled in 2001, but the details were not disclosed."
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