Birdshot Between Friends

OK! I've given you people about a week to let the Dick Cheney thing simmer down in the press. Enough of the corny late night jokes, mild protestations from the mainstream media about the secretive White House, and bad makeup jobs on one Harry Whittington for media briefings (that pancake makeup did make him look decades younger, though). I've come to the conclusion that this was the biggest political non-issue of the past decade. We haven't been this worked up since Monica Lewinsky produced that stained blue dress - but that's a whole other post.

So why am I blathering on about a non-issue? Well, it's been a slow news week and there is one component of this whole Birdshot Incident that hasn't been sufficiently explored to my satisfaction. And the one problem I have is about the amount of alcohol that had been consumed prior to that fateful shot. Now Mr. Cheney has said that he had a beer at lunch (and we all know that the shooting took place around dusk). Unless he had a very low tolerance for brew - which I truly doubt - a lunchtime beer wouldn't be that big of an issue. But if you look alittle closer to statements made by Mr. Whittington when he was interviewed, things start to look alittle fishy.

When the sheriff went to interview Mr. Whittington at the hospital the next day, his initial remarks were that there was no alcohol involved. See page 2 of The Smoking Gun's copy of the Kenedy County Sherrif's Department Incident Report (Texas Cops Release Cheney Shooting Report). Combine that with the fact that instead of being interviewed the evening of the event (Friday), Dick Cheney waited until 8:00 AM the following morning to speak with the sheriff about the incident.

Something tells me that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Whittington, and probably the whole hunting party was sloppy drunk when this whole shooting incident went down. I think that they'd been drinking scotch and waters in the backseat of the Veep's caravan since lunch. They staggered out into the field when the scouts found some birds and Mr. Whittington (in a drunken stupor) blithely wandered into Mr. Cheney's line of fire as he tried to blast some quail feathers out of the brush. Don't feel too bad for Mr. Whittington, I don't think he felt any pain!

More power to them... just another case of the coverup of a victimless crime (what crime?). I wish Mr. Whittington a speedy recovery and I'm glad that the tasteless jokes about Dick Cheney have stopped. Hey, what's wrong with alittle birdshot between friends?