[O Neill]

In the beginning, alcohol was not involved.

Now, the unanswerable question is how much alcohol was involved. It's unanswerable because the local Sheriff did not send CSI out to the shooting scene to gather evidence (including breathalizer test reports). One can only wonder how many ranch shootings in Texas received no law enforcement response until the Ranch Hands say it's okay to send CSI out.

The original Fish & Game Report says alcohol was not involved, period, but a violation of law (no 'Upland Bird Stamp') was perpetrated. Cheney immediately cuts a $7 check & mails it in. Further, the local Sheriff sends no investigators to the Ranch that evening, based upon assurances of a Ranch Hand employed by the Ranch (& former Sheriff's Deputy) that this was an accident & investigators could come Sunday morning.

When meek investigators are dispatched to interview the aged Harry at the Hospital, they ask if they can record the interview...Harry says No!. They then ask for an Affidavit & Harry says he'll do that when he returns to Austin & gets a Round Tuit. The nurse tell the investigators to vamoose, which they do, but only after aged Harry tells them the ONE thing they need to know: "NO ALCOHOL WAS INVOLVED!" No one knows the whereabouts of the alleged bird, allegedly flushed from the field by Cheney's footsteps...or those of his female companion-hunter.

And we are left with the VP, flush with SOME unknowable amount of alcohol, whirling counter-clockwise into the sunset, hurriedly aiming at an alleged, never-identified bird & firing .28-gauge buckshot into the tall grass where his aged friend Harry crouched in search of dead game...

Cheney's poor judgment leaves me no choice but to cease being apologetic for this fiasco...Sorry.

[clawrence3]

Are you kidding?

[tet68]

28 guage buckshot???

Gowan!

[Shelayne]

No one knows the whereabouts of the alleged bird, allegedly flushed from the field by Cheney's footsteps...

---

I suspect that this alleged bird, is--if not dead--flitting around somewhere. Allegedly.

Yoo hoo, Birdie, please reveal yourself to the press and tell your side of the story!

[Shelayne]

And we are left with the VP, flush with SOME unknowable amount of alcohol, whirling counter-clockwise into the sunset, hurriedly aiming at an alleged, never-identified bird & firing .28-gauge buckshot into the tall grass where his aged friend Harry crouched in search of dead game...

---

Is "tall grass" the new grassy knoll? Are you suggesting that Cheney was not, in fact, hunting quail, but perhaps hunting HIS FRIEND? With birdshot?

I saw a similar episode on "Gilligan's Island" many years ago.

Seriously, is this satire? Because it certainly sounds like it.

[CFC__VRWC]

So which theory are you sticking to, the one that says that the Secret Service stood by and did nothing while Cheney and Company got all likkered up and then decided to play with their guns, or the one where Cheney intentionally shot Whittington to tell Scooter Libby, "be quiet or this might happen to you!"?

Obviously you've bought into the Daily Kos line about Cheney having an affair, with your reference to his "female companion-hunter." And obviously the local authorities are all in on the great cover-up as well, according to you. And of course it's just a coincidence that the media's even now sharpening their claws for the sheriff and the DA down there. Right?

[Simo Hayha]

The hay is in the barn. But we get to witness the chosen ones take it back out, cut it to their liking, rake it into a pile big enough to please them, bundle it into bales they are happy with, stack it on the wagon fit for a parade, and bring it to the barn and have a square-dance around it.

And people are surprised that Cheney didn't take a seat in the dunking stool after the last 5 years of fiddlin' by the in-bred media?