Cheney Shoots Man

By now you've heard the news about Dead-Eye Dick. What's interesting is that the story is so squirrelly that it can be analyzed like the Kennedy Assassination. Not that there is something more than just a clumsy hunting accident, but there's a mystery here...

Things can get chaotic and excited when a bunch of birds (I'll just try, as a blanket matter, not to use the jargon) come into range or rise up. But if you don't shoot outside that safe fire zone, then everyone should be safe.

Now, if you read the description provided by Katharine Armstrong, the Bush-Cheney fundraiser on whose 'ranch' this happened, what she seems to describe is this: The birds 'flush'. Cheney picks out a bird and starts following it. In the process he basically wheels around doing a 180. So he's spun around and is now firing backwards relative to the direction he had been facing. And Whittington was just, for whatever reason, where Cheney didn't expect him to be.

There's a weirdness here because Cheney obviously committed the grave sin of safe hunting -- he pulled the trigger while pointing the gun towards a human. But this Armstrong swears it was the victim's fault for not alerting Cheney that he was behind him. Then Mary Matalin (Cheney staff member and civil rights expert) chimes in, "The vice president was concerned. He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."

Our Vice President Richard Cheney is incapable of error. Carry on.