14 February 2006

Don't play with guns!

It's not the fact that Vice-President Cheney shot a fellow hunter. No, the fun lies in all the bizarre little details. The Times reports some of it:
"A spokesman for the Texas Rangers said: “The Secret Service are handling everything. When I call up and ask for information, people get weird with me.”

The Texas Rangers? They still exist?

"The White House press corps were turning their fire on Scott McClellan, the President’s spokesman. They were incredulous that the media had not been told sooner. He was accused of “totally ducking and weaving”, and “being a jerk”.
Mr McClellan, who is usually treated with more respect, pleaded with reporters not to yell at him, and implored them to “calm down”.

How unlike the UK reptiles and the press spokesman at No 10.

"According to her eye-witness account, Mr Cheney and Pam Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, were approached from behind by Mr Whittington just as the Vice-President was turning to shoot. “Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good,” she said."

The US Ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein? How did she get involved?

"Mr Bush knows Mr Whittington from his days as Texas Governor. In 1999 he put him in charge of a commission regulating funerals. Eliza May, who had headed the commission, was then suing the state, saying she had been dismissed because she investigated a funeral-home chain owned by a friend of Mr Bush."

A commission regulating funerals? And what happened to the charmingly-named Eliza May?
"White House sources yesterday were unaware of any evidence that Mr Cheney may have consumed alcohol before the accident on Saturday. Mary Matalin, one of his advisers, said: “He was not careless or incautious. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.”

Like, you mean he was supposed to shoot one of his hunting buddies?

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