Truly a Dick

There's been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about the now infamous Cheney hunting accident over the weekend.

I don't know if it was anything more than an accident. The guy who was shot is, by all accounts, a loyal Republican, and if they were trying to punish a political opponent, or send a message to a wayward ally, there must be a more inconspicuous way to do it than having the VP shoot him.

The real issue with the whole mess, it seems to me, is the secrecy surrounding it, secrecy all too typical of this administration, and Cheney in particular,

This is the man, after all, who refused to reveal the details, or even the participants, in his energy task force that set the nation's oil policy, a task force heavily populated by oil company bigwigs.

No, the question I would like answered about the Trigger Happy Dick is why it took the White House a day to let anyone even know that the Vice President of the United States was involved in a shooting incident. Isn't that sort of news?

As the AP reports: “The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported it Sunday. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said the vice president's office did not tell reporters about the accident Saturday because they were deferring to the ranch owner to announce what happened on her property.”

That would be Katharine Armstrong, another millionaire Republican, of course, who was put forward as the “face” of the incident.

Can you imagine the scandalized outcry from the right wingers if this had been Al Gore during the Clinton years? Rush “to the buffet” Limbaugh, et al, saw scandal and conspiracy when the Clintons went to church. Republicans would have been calling for congressional hearings. The 24-hour cable news channels would have had special graphics in place, and ominious theme music playing every time they went to a commercial.

Even if this was nothing more than an actual hunting accident, as is likely the case (although who knows if alcohol was involved, police statement notwithstanding), the reaction by the White House is the real problem. The automatic tendency of the Bush-Cheney people to cover up, to hide, to keep dark secrets.

Update: The Smoking Gun has the Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept. report here.