So, what have we learned about Dick Cheney’s shooting incident over the last half-day or so? A few things of interest.
* Though it’s hardly an impeachable offense, Cheney technically didn’t have the proper $7 stamp on his hunting license to shoot quail in Texas. (As Think Progress put it, “Cheney was hunting illegally.”) The Vice President’s office has since sent a $7 check to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which is the cost of an upland game bird stamp.
* Cheney aides have been working overtime to tell reporters that the entire shooting was Harry Whittington’s fault, but hunting safety experts insist that the shooter is responsible for knowing his surroundings and avoiding hitting other people. “We always stress to anybody that before you make any kind of a shot, it’s incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it’s a safe shot,” said Mark Birkhauser, president-elect of the International Hunter Education Association and hunter education coordinator. Birkhauser added, “Every second, you’re adjusting your personal information that it is a safe area to shoot or it’s not a safe area to shoot.”
* The VP’s office released a statement to the press about the faulty hunting license. Putting this in context, Cheney’s first public announcement was not to alert reporters to the accident, or to express sympathy for his shooting victim, but rather to address a $7 game bird stamp.
* There’s some confusion surrounding the access given to the local sheriff’s office. The New York Times reports today that the Secret Service contacted the sheriff shortly after the shooting occurred and that the chief deputy spoke to Cheney on Saturday night. The Dallas Morning News reports that the VP “was not interviewed on Saturday.”
* The Texas sheriff’s office has concluded that “there was no alcohol or misconduct involved in the incident.”
* Karl Rove spoke directly with ranch owner Katharine Armstrong, the witness who was effectively deputized to be the communications staff for the Vice President, within 90 minutes of the shooting.
* De facto spokesperson Armstrong is a registered lobbyist for an engineering and construction firm that has done extensive work in Iraq.
* A New York Times editorial said, “[W]hat might have been a one-day gag on late-night TV is now a running story, and an excellent reminder that this administration never met a fact that it didn’t want to suppress…. The vice president appears to have behaved like a teenager who thinks that if he keeps quiet about the wreck, no one will notice that the family car is missing its right door…. [T]he White House, in trying to cover up the cover-up, has once again demonstrated that it would rather look inept than open.”
* A Washington Post editorial notes that there are some fairly serious questions to which the “White House has no satisfactory answer; neither does the vice president’s office.” The Post added, ” Neither Mr. Cheney nor the White House gets to pick and choose when to disclose a shooting. Saturday’s incident required immediate public disclosure — a fact so elementary that the failure to act properly is truly disturbing in its implications.
* Bush, reflecting on a 1994 incident in which he accidentally killed an endangered killdeer during a dove shoot, wrote in his autobiography, “”Karen [Hughes] and I looked at each other. What now? ‘We confess,’ we both said, almost simultaneously.” Bush called every reporter who had been on his hunting trip and held a press conference. The lesson of the shooting, Bush wrote, is that “people watch the way you handle things; they get a feeling they like and trust you, or they don’t.”
* The late-night comedians had a field day with the story last night. The Daily Show was particularly, ahem, on target.
* And my personal favorite comes by way of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who as you’ll recall, was told by Cheney to “go f***” himself. Yesterday, Leahy said, “In retrospect, it looks like I got off easy.”