Am I the only one who thinks that the Vice President accidentally shooting a hunting buddy, while being news and joke-worthy, is being massively overplayed in the press and on the blogosphere?
Okay, so the VP accidentally shot someone. Okay, so maybe the press wasn’t informed quickly enough. So maybe he didn’t have a hunting license. So the victim had a heart attack because of birdshot in the lining of his heart. So maybe the VP had a few drinks beforehand. The reason for delaying the press release may even have been to shuttle Cheney’s extramarital affair out of the picture.
But it still doesn’t deserve the kind of continuous coverage it’s been getting. It was an honest accident involving two Americans exercising their constitutional rights to bear arms. The Press and the Left seems to have its collective panties in a wad because the Veep had a few brews with a few hunting buddies before shooting his friend in the face and chest.
If you really want to go after Cheney, at least go after him for something worth shining some light on.
How about the fact that Cheney feels he has the power to declassify secrets in order to discredit political opponents? That seems to be a thousand times more important than the hunting incident, but my favorite blog indexer seems to be strangely quiet over the fact that the VP may have declassified information (something he probably has the legal ability to do) in order to out a CIA agent (something that is illegal according to our code of laws, at least to my limited understanding).
Or how about that the fact that Congress, especially the weak-willed, poll-following Democrats, once again appears to be rolling over to the administration by refusing to closely investigate the NSA spy scandal? (How’s that for representing the populace for you? Can we get a third second party over here, please? One that doesn’t pander for a living? Geez.)
Or how about the fact that our government has sullied each of us and destroyed our image around the world by using torture as the method of choice for dealing with prisoners?
If you want to be righteously indignant about something, at least make sure it’s something worth fighting about. Cheney’s quail hunt is newsworthy, surely, but only for about twenty-four hours. It seem that the excessive zeal displayed by those digging into this case is just misplace glee at someone’s misfortune. Get over it and let’s move on to discussing the real issues.
