The jokes are pretty much gonna write themselves over the Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter incident, aren’t they? Stina‘s right – it’s like someone wanted to give Jon Stewart a present.
On the not-so-funny side of things, here’s a question that needs an answer:
While E&P was first to raise the question 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.”
Honestly, is anyone surprised?
UPDATE: Mark Evanier asks a good question: Why is the man who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency out hunting?
Shouldn’t the Secret Service still say, “Uh, Mr. Vice-President, we don’t like you being around people with guns”? I mean, isn’t there some unnecessary security risk in there? Even if everyone in the hunting party passes a rigid security clearance, the Secret Service is supposed to keep weapons away from the Veep. And if Cheney could accidentally shoot this poor guy, isn’t there some danger of this poor guy accidentally shooting Cheney?
I always understood that when you run for public office of this magnitude, you agree to sacrifice a certain amount of privacy and freedom to the folks charged with protecting you. Anyone here remember Ronald Reagan claiming the reason he didn’t attend church more often was because the Secret Service thought it was a security risk and asked him not to? I’m no fan of Mr. Cheney but couldn’t he put off killing quail ’til he’s out of office? There’ll be ducks then. There may not be a future for our economy but there’ll be quail.
Got me. Any theories out there?
UPDATE: Michael has the same question in the comments, which I didn’t see until after I’d posted the previous update.
Given that the cnn article quotes the owner of the ranch where Cheney got himself a piece of the most dangerous game as saying that this is just something that happens when you go quail hunting (“freuqently but not often”), why is the VPOTUS allowed to do it? Bush Sr, wasn’t allowed to go skydiving until years after he was irrelevant (1991), and it’s probably not as risky as being shot.
By all means, let’s prevent any gun control.
I have a theory. Now that the White House is a Loyalty Bunker, who’s going to say no? ‘No’ is a career limiting word, in BushCheneyLand.
The guy would have been just fine, if Dick hadn’t gutted him.
They got him to the hospital as fast as they could after strapping him to the hood of the truck.
The biggest problem is now the location of Cheney’s “undisclosed secure location” has been blown.
The secret service is now frantically trying to find another spot with an active hunting season to sequester him until the trout start biting and he can go back to his Jackson, WY undisclosed loaction.
One of my friends says that a CBC photo of a quail had a caption that said, “Quail look like this.” Hee!
Anyway. Vice President Cheney shouldn’t be allowed to do anything risky like that when Ted Stevens is so high up in the order of succession, dangit.
Cheney must have thought he was Quayle hunting….
I went hunting with Dick Cheney and all I got was some buckshot and this bloody t-shirt.
Hey make sure the next time you go hunting, get a tee shirt that’s bulletproof.
http://www.cafepress.com/dickwantsyou
🙂
Is anyone else waiting for the Vince Foster style conspiracy theories to pop-up, or is it just me?
Holy smokes, George Bush is just a heartbeat away from the vice-presidency.