Cheney’s Latest Screw-Up

Dick "Last Throes" Cheney, who is already believed to be a liar by most of the American public, on Saturday managed to shoot a fellow hunter in his party while out on a quail slaughter. Lots of good commentary on this on the web, but here’s the best reaction I’ve seen to date, off the US Newswire:

"Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him," said Jim Brady [former press secretary to President Reagan]. "I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog – and I thought he was an idiot."

Also very interesting is this 2003 statement from the Humane Society, objecting vociferously to the "deplorable" style of hunting "in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape."

"This wasn’t a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets."

Pacelle was speaking of a hunting trip in which Cheney and nine close shooting buddies massacred 417 birds. No word on how many quail died in the festivities on Saturday.