I gave you too much credit. You are an idiot.How does the Vice-President have time to go hunting? Aren't we in the middle of a war? Isn't this a time of such crisis that our very liberties are nothing but mere luxuries that we must set aside to protect ourselves?
There is so much immediate and impending danger that the VP has time to hunt for quail....
You're an idiot if you don't see the irony in the administration alleging expanded powers because we are in the middle of a war and yet, the VP finds enough time during the "war" to go hunting.
Are we in the middle of a war or not?
If we are, should our VP take vacation during the war?
Yes, he needs a break from the cluster in Iraq that he helped create.
Well, since this administration is full of pansies who won't go fight their own war and they like to dodge drafts, they can at least go shoot defensless animals to feel tough.
OR SHOOT ME! SUM !!!
Holy -- "The Daily Show" has enough material for the whole week from this thing.
Shooting Cartoons. Some funny ones in there.
Of course it's all bull but we can laugh instead of burning the writers flags and .
http://cagle.com/news/CheneyShoots/main.asp
Man...sit yo' green party lovin', republican wannabee ass down and shut-up! You've used up all your credit up in here with your Bush lovin' postin'.
Hit the bricks!!!
Yoni needs to be taken out and buried in the desert.
All due respect.
guys back in ICU
February 14th, 2006 2:08 pm
Hunter shot by Cheney has 'minor heart attack'
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (CNN) -- The fellow hunter who was shot and wounded by Vice President Cheney has suffered a "minor heart attack" after a piece of birdshot migrated to his heart, a hospital spokesman said Tuesday.
Harry Whittington, 78, is in stable condition in intensive care and will remain hospitalized for up to seven days, hospital officials said.
"Some of the bird shot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart ... in what we would say is a minor heart attack," said Peter Banko, administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.
Cheney and Whittington were hunting quail on a friend's south Texas ranch Saturday when the vice president shot and wounded him.
Doctors were deciding how to treat Whittington's condition, which was discovered after doctors noticed an irregularity in his heartbeat, Banko said.
Dr. David Blanchard, the hospital's emergency room chief, said Whittington suffered an "asymptomatic heart attack," without displaying symptoms such as chest pains or breathing difficulty. He said a roughly 5 mm piece of shot became lodged in or alongside Whittington's heart muscle, causing the organ's upper two chambers to beat irregularly.
Physicians from the White House staff, who helped treat Whittington after Cheney shot him in a Saturday hunting accident, have been consulted on the situation, Banko said.
Authorities have cleared Cheney of wrongdoing in the accidental shooting of Whittington, but questions about Saturday's incident remain.
During Tuesday's White House news conference, spokesman Scott McClellan was asked if waiting 14 hours after the shooting before Cheney spoke with police was appropriate, and whether an average citizen would have been afforded the same amount of time.
"That was what was arranged with the local law enforcement authorities," McClellan said. "You ought to ask them that question."
McClellan referred other questions about Cheney's shooting of Whittington, a Bush-Cheney campaign contributor, to the vice president's office and local police.
Cheney arrived for work at the White House on Tuesday without comment and a spokeswoman said the vice president had no plans for any public statement about the matter.
"This department is fully satisfied that this was no more than a hunting accident," the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department announced in a statement issued Monday evening.
Sheriff's deputies in Kenedy County, near Corpus Christi, questioned Cheney on Sunday and Whittington on Monday.
A prominent Texas lawyer and a campaign donor to the Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004, Whittington was hit on the right side of his face, neck and chest when Cheney turned to fire on a covey of quail at a ranch near Kingsville, Texas, on Saturday. But Cheney's office did not disclose the shooting until Sunday afternoon, after the family that owns the ranch told a Corpus Christi newspaper about it.
McClellan told reporters on Monday that the focus in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was to make sure the man Cheney wounded got medical attention.
"It's important, always, to work to make sure you get information out like this as quickly as possible," McClellan said. "But it's also important to make sure that the first priority is focused where it should be, and that is making sure that Mr. Whittington has the care that he needs."
McClellan said Cheney agreed that his friend Katharine Armstrong, who accompanied the shooting party, should tell the Corpus Christi Caller-Times about the incident, a move that provoked sharp questions from reporters.
Asked whether it was appropriate "for a private citizen to be the person to disseminate the information that the vice president of the United States has shot someone," McClellan said, "That's one way to provide information to the public."
"The vice president spoke with her directly and agreed that she should make it public and that they would provide additional information," he said.
Cheney, an avid hunter, was shooting at a covey of quail at the Armstrong Ranch near Kingsville, southwest of Corpus Christi, when the accident occurred. According to Armstrong, a daughter of Anne Armstrong, Whittington shot a quail, dropped back from the rest of the hunting party to retrieve it and was rejoining the group when Cheney fired.
Katharine Armstrong said no one discussed informing the public about the incident until Sunday morning, when she and her mother raised the matter with Cheney. Saturday night, she said, "The only concern we all had was about Harry."
But she said Cheney made it clear he knew it had to be made public.
A medical team accompanying the vice president administered first aid to Whittington when the accident occurred at 5:50 p.m., Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur said. The Secret Service told sheriff's deputies about the accident an hour later, after Whittington was headed for a hospital in Kingsville and the hunting party had returned to the ranch house, he said.
A Kenedy County sheriff's deputy questioned Cheney about the shooting on Sunday, Mazur said.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told President Bush about 7:30 p.m. Saturday that there had been a hunting accident, but Card did not know the vice president had been involved at the time, the White House said. About 8 p.m., after talking with Armstrong, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Bush that Cheney had shot Whittington.
Whittington was hit upon rejoining the group and "apparently came up unannounced" as Cheney prepared to fire, Armstrong said Sunday.
Whittington has been active in Texas GOP politics since the 1960s and served as chairman of the state Board of Corrections from 1979 to 1985. In 1999, then-Gov. Bush named him to the state Funeral Services Commission, which had been stung by allegations of widespread corruption and mismanagement in the industry.
Anne Armstrong served on the board of directors of Halliburton, the oil field service company Cheney ran before becoming vice president. She also served as U.S. ambassador to Britain in the Ford administration.
CNN's Dana Bash, Suzanne Malveaux and Tim McCaughan contributed to this report.
Cheney is gonna speak for the 1st time on this later today in a 1 on 1 interview with Brit Hume on Fox News.
what a wimp.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11361657/
Last edited by SA210; 02-15-2006 at 11:50 AM.
Cheney to speak about shooting today
Controversy continues over White House handling of hunting incident
NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 11:45 a.m. ET Feb. 15, 2006
WASHINGTON - Vice President Cheney on Wednesday will make his first public comments on the accidental shooting of a hunting partner.
The White House announced Wednesday morning that Cheney would be interviewed by Fox News at 2 p.m. ET.
Fox planned to air the interview during its news program at 6 p.m. ET, but it was not clear if excerpts would be available beforehand.
Cheney’s office said it knew of no ground rules or limitations on subject matter. Many media observers consider Fox's coverage to favor conservative issues and see it as friendly to Cheney and other members of the Bush administration.
Sources earlier told NBC News that Cheney was preparing to speak to the issue, but they also cautioned that “we're at Wednesday” and suggested that progress made by Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old lawyer shot by Cheney, would play a big role in how any public comment is handled.
Journalists have been scrambling to piece together the full story behind the accident last Saturday at a Texas ranch. Meanwhile, Republican party pressure on Cheney to address the issue has been growing.
While politically motivated rants and bad jokes about the shooting spread like wildfire through office corridors and around the Web, Whittington’s doctors said he had suffered "a silent heart attack" when birdshot from Cheney's errant blast moved into or was touching his heart.
Whittington was immediately moved back to the intensive care unit for further treatment at a Corpus Christi, Texas, hospital, and the vice president, lauded and pilloried as the unflappable fix-it man of the Bush administration, once again moved into the white-hot spotlight of controversy.
Cheney issued a brief written statement saying that he "stood ready to assist" and that "his thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Whittington and his family," but the lack of any public comment from the vice president on the incident itself has only fueled questions and theories about what actually happened at Katharine Armstrong's 50,000-acre spread.
The dustup over the accident and when it was made public "is part of the secretive nature of this administration," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "I think it’s time the American people heard from the vice president."
According to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report issued Monday, Whittington was retrieving a downed quail about 5:30 p.m. CT and stepped out of the hunting line he was sharing with Cheney at Armstrong's ranch south of Corpus Christi. "Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards," the report said.
The report went on to note that neither Cheney, who wielded a .28-gauge Perazzi shotgun loaded with 7.5 birdshot, nor Whittington appeared to be under the influence of intoxicants or drugs. While Whittington had not taken a hunter safety course, optional for hunters of his and Cheney's age in Texas, state officials could not determine if Cheney had, the report said. While they had Texas hunting licenses, both men were admonished for failing to buy a $7 stamp allowing them to shoot upland game birds. A department spokesman said warnings are being issued in most cases because the stamp requirement only went into effect five months ago and many hunters weren’t aware of it.
The department found the main cause of the accident was a “hunter’s judgment factor.” No secondary factors were found to have played a role.
Late Tuesday, Whittington, a wealthy Republican donor, was in stable condition and expected to stay in the hospital for another week to make sure that more birdshot does not move to vital organs.
Hospital officials said they knew that Whittington had some birdshot near his heart ever since the Saturday evening shooting. The pellet always was at risk of moving closer since scar tissue had not had time to harden and remain in place, they said.
They said they are not concerned about other birdshot — widely estimated to be between six and 200 pieces — that might still be lodged in Whittington’s body.
The doctors said Whittington did not experience classic symptoms of a heart attack, but they estimate that he probably had a minor or "silent" one around 6:30 a.m. CT. They said they decided to treat the situation “conservatively” rather than conduct surgery to remove the pellet. They said he could live a healthy life with it left in place.
Asked whether the pellet could move further into the heart and become fatal, hospital officials said that was a hypothetical question they could not answer. But they said they are extremely optimistic that he will recover.
Controversy swirled around the incident almost as soon as national reporters got wind of it because more than 20 hours elapsed before any public word about it, which then came via a call from ranch owner Armstrong to a local newspaper in Corpus Christi, reportedly with Cheney's consent. Also, it wasn't until the morning after the shooting that Cheney and members of his party were interviewed by local law enforcement.
Bush quickly learned about shooting
President Bush was told about Cheney’s involvement in the accident shortly before 8 p.m. ET Saturday — about 90 minutes after it occurred — but the White House did not disclose the accident until Sunday afternoon, and then only in response to press questions.
Facing a press corps upset that news had been withheld, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, “If you want to continue to spend time on that, that’s fine. ... We’re moving on to the priorities of the American people. That’s where our focus is.”
The shooting presents a new problem for the White House as it seeks to repair damaged credibility in a midterm election year in which continued GOP control of Congress hangs in the balance.
Cheney, 65, whose “favorable” rating was just 24 percent in a recent CBS-New York Times poll, has found himself in other storms swirling around the Bush presidency.
His strong insistence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction helped build the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He also has played the role of point man in the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program in the war on terror.
And, more recently, his indicted former chief of staff — I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby — testified to a grand jury about being authorized to disclose classified information to the press in the CIA leak case “by his superiors,” according to court do ents. Democrats have demanded to know whether Cheney was one of those superiors.
“These things become symptoms of a broader disquiet with Cheney,” said Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University.
'Such an anger toward Cheney'
Among moderate and liberal Americans, “there is such an anger toward Cheney,” Light said. “There are people who believed he pulled the trigger figuratively on a lot of things. Vice presidents can get away with hitting people with golf balls, but they can’t get away with shooting people with shotguns.”
Cheney succeeded in avoiding reporters during a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for meetings with lawmakers.
The terse, unsigned statement issued by Cheney's office said the vice president had phoned Whittington from the White House.
Whittington’s “spirits were good, but obviously his situation deserves the careful monitoring that his doctors are providing,” the statement said.
Unlike the president, who is accompanied by a news media pool whenever he travels in public, Cheney repeatedly makes unannounced trips around town and around the country — as he did with his weekend hunting excursion in south Texas, and again on his trip to the Capitol on Tuesday.
Cheney remains popular with the GOP conservative base. Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster and strategist, said that all vice presidents have to overcome the fact that “you never get the benefit of the doubt for the good things you do, and never any lack of blame for the bad things.”
He said he expects the controversy to pass, especially if Whittington makes a full recovery.
If the shooting victim’s condition worsens, that could increase the seriousness of the incident, and bring more scrutiny to bear on what exactly happened on the private Texas ranch.
“But if somehow the president considers Cheney gets to be a liability, I think that getting rid of him or encouraging him to step down would cause problems for the Republicans with their base,” said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist.
“And Cheney is like a member of the Bush family. The president would no sooner push Cheney overboard than he would Jeb,” Baker said, referring to Bush brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
I'm glad that our political news is dominated by such weighty matters. It's not as if there weren't other issues of greater import and potential negative impact facing the administration a scant week ago. I guess if you are obsessed with the current administration might a story like this move so effortlessly from comedy to conspiracy.
It's can't be out desperation for lack of negative news, so what is it?
Speaking of conspiracy, one rumor spreading on the internet is that Whittington has been dead since Sunday. I think this story has moved on from the actual incident to how poorly the Vice President's people handled the media.
Sure, and that is of minimal consequence. This is why this country devotes substantial resources and efforts to 'Get Out the Vote' campaigns. Most people need some prodding to engage in the democratic process when crap like this is given such importance.
You'd have to think that the White House would rather endure another week or two of this story dominating the airwaves.
New reports are that Whittington also has a pellet lodged in his liver.
Here's a copy of the incident report from the Tx Parks and Wildlife...
Smoking Gun
I will admit that the Times running an explanation of how a shotgun works is rather humorous.
Remember how in Rock 'N Roll High School (don't tell me you haven't seen it), lab mice spontaneously exploded when exposed to rock music?
I think Cheney should use his interview with Brit Hume to announce that's he going to be a candidate for president in '08. I think all over Washington the Dana Milbanks and Helen Thomases would simply explode.
^ I just read that elsewhere.
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