BlogHer - Cheney Speaks Out About Shooting - Comments

if you are interested

stacyb — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 05:26:32 -0600

Some blogs are really going into CSI mode and trying to figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle. Emptywheel over at The Last Hurrah is putting all her investigative skills to the test and found some interesting inconsistencies in the whole shooting story as described by Cheney's people. It's worth a look.

heh

stacyb — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 05:17:31 -0600

Kim- yes, he probably scored some points with some folks for shooting a lawyer ;)

What I fin interesting is how he is getting a "pass" on the whole drinking thing because as a lawyer as soon as I heard he wouldn't talk with police for almost 15 hours the first thing that came to my head was "oh, they are waiting until his blood alcohol level comes down". Drinking in this case is no small matter and if it had been you or I, we would have been called to account for that.

I am surprised more people aren't looking at this as a sort of cover-up because that is my personal take, looking at all the facts- from all the inconsistencies in Mrs. Armstrong's story (the ranch owner), to the fact they didn't notify the media until the next day, etc.

Can you imagine if this had been Clinton or Gore? Heh.

A friend of mine who is a

Kim Ponders — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 08:07:45 -0600

A friend of mine who is a Chicago lawyer pointed out: Hey, he shot a lawyer--doesn't he get any points for that??

Cheney Speaks Out About Shooting

stacyb — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:26:46 -0600

The shooting/hunting incident involving Dick Cheney continues to be the story of the day, helped along by the fact that the Vice President decided to break his much-ridiculed silence and grant an exclusive [pre-taped] interview to Fox News' Brit Hume.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday accepted full blame for shooting a fellow hunter and defended his decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day. He called it "one of the worst days of my life."

"I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney told Fox News Channel in his first public comments since the shooting Saturday in south Texas.

[snip]

Cheney said he had had a beer at lunch that day, but nobody was drinking when they went back out to hunt several hours later.

Texas officials said the shooting was an accident, and no charges have been brought against the vice president.

The reaction to the incident in the legal and political blogosphere (from both the Right and the Left side of the spectrum) has been swift and, well, arguably partisan.

Firedoglake was fuming over the fact that a witness to the accident was quoted yesterday on MSNBC.com as mentioning that beer had been consumed by the hunting party, only to have said reference removed from the website only hours later and the question they were asking was by whom, and why?

As for the legal implications, it appears Cheney is off the hook, as hunting accidents such as the this, are usually not investigated. At least not in Texas.

Meanwhile, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said it will classify the Saturday shooting as an error in judgment by Cheney, said Steve Hall, education director for the department. Members of the hunting party have blamed Whittington for not announcing his location to the others.

[snip]

Regardless of who was at fault, Nueces County District Attorney Carlos Valdez said there are no plans to prosecute the case because the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department ruled the shooting an accident.
Valdez, who has jurisdiction in both counties, said his office does look into hunting fatalities. But Valdez said he has not prosecuted hunting accidents in 26 years as a prosecutor, including the last 14 as district attorney.

Ann Althouse sees the furor over the incident as merely a national distraction from other more pressing matters, while Amy Ridenour over at the National Center blog, thinks that perhaps we could use this distraction to our advantage and maybe even get a few things accomplished along the way.