Liberal TV, Radio Hosts Hope To Milk Cheney Situation

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Desperately Seeking Scandal



UPDATED with video and FOX News/Hume interview links below


To prove Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident is a full-fledged scandal, just how far are desperate liberal media types willing to go?

Proving nothing is off the table, Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC and McLaughlin Group fame wants the public to believe Cheney had been drinking! Beyond Dr. Pepper, is there an eyewitness report of anything consumed in liquid form?

No.

Is there any other way to substantiate this allegation? Nope.

Evidence, who needs evidence? On the left, it's conspiracy-huntin' season.

Without hesitation, one could easily expect the left to go ballistic were conservatives to make similar baseless charges against a Democrat. Yet the Huffington Post went right ahead and published O'Donnell's sloppy, tinfoil hat-like conspiratorial speculation:

Was Cheney Drunk?

The L.A. Times is edging closer to the most likely reason for the 18 hour delay in reporting that the Vice President of the United States shot someone:

"This was a hunting accident," said Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy of the Kenedy County Sheriff's Office. "There was no alcohol or misconduct."

How do we know there was no alcohol? Cheney refused to talk to local authorities until the next day. No point in giving him a breathalyzer then. Every lawyer I've talked to assumes Cheney was too drunk to talk to the cops after the shooting. The next question for the White House should be: Was Cheney drunk?

I have never gone hunting with ultra-rich Republicans on a Saturday afternoon, but I have seen them tailgating at Ivy League football games, so it's hard for me to believe that any of their Saturday lunches are alcohol free.

HuffPo didn't stop there, following up with another, even more conspiratorial piece by Cenk Uygur. An excerpt:

Sobering Discrepancies in Cheney's Story

There are several reasons why you might want to wait 24 hours before reporting that the Vice President has shot someone. One of them is not the official reason given - they first wanted to make sure the guy was okay. That might take a couple of hours, but not a whole day.

Instead they sit on the story for 24 hours and then have the ranch owner release it to a small local newspaper. I can think of only two possible explanations for this bizarre reaction.

They thought they might be able to bury it. But that's just nuts. What, the Corpus Christi paper runs a story about the Vice President shooting a friend in the head and no one else notices?

The second explanation is that they were buying time. Now, it's nearly impossible to know why. But since they won't tell us the real reason, we are forced into speculation. One obvious reason why someone would want to buy time before talking to anyone about an accident like this is because they are waiting to sober up.

The Secret Service wouldn't allow a local sheriff's deputy to talk to the Vice President that night. Why? How is that within their purview? Was the sheriff's deputy going to endanger the Vice President?

I want to make clear that I have no evidence that the Vice President had been drinking. But I also know the sheriff's office down in Kenedy County has no evidence to conclude that the Vice President was not drinking that night. They never gave him a breathalyzer test, as they almost certainly would have if this was an average citizen involved in a dangerous shooting. They never observed him that night - they weren't allowed to see him. They're taking the word of his friends who have a financial and personal interest in protecting the Vice President, and who also might have been drinking with him.

Note the distortions and exaggerations here: an 18-hour delay suddenly becomes 24, while the administration supposedly thought the Corpus Christi paper would bury the story (really, how do you know that?). In addition, note the strong guilty-until-proven-innocent assumption in both essays.

Regarding the delay, however long it really was, why exactly are we supposed to care? And when did it become a crime to disclose information to newspapers below a certain circulation size?

Another trend: they're clearly downplaying the "accident" aspect of this. Watch this line of "reasoning" next deteriorate into asserting he intentionally shot his longtime friend.

Now, to add to this increasingly manufactured controversy: was the Dr. Pepper bottle spiked? Just how conspiratorial can the left become?

If you need a good laugh, by the way, get a load of the HuffPo comments section. An example:

The LA Times stated today that one of the meals Cheney and friends ate had Dr. Pepper as the drink of choice. It's interesting that it made a point of mentioning that. Sure sounds a little odd to me.

Posted by: Pedagogy on February 14, 2006

Meanwhile, via a Cheney shooting incident wire story, Al Franken has seen (thanks to his liberal media friends) a substantial amount of free ink today. So far, this has run on the websites of hundreds of newspapers:

The first shooting involving a vice president since the time of Aaron Burr has lit up the blogosphere and late-night television with political jokesters lampooning Vice President Dick Cheney's weekend hunting accident as "Quailgate."

"You know who's doing a 'there but for the grace of God go I'? Scalia," wrote comedian Al Franken on his Web site, referring to Cheney's longtime duck-hunting friend, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Sadly, other Air America talk hosts have so far been left out of the feeding frenzy. For all of them, a question: do you really think this can be milked beyond a few days?

UPDATE: Cheney to appear on the FOX News Channel at 6pm tonight (Wednesday).

Welcome Riehl World View, The Jawa Report and GOPinion readers!

UPDATE: Expose The Left has video of O'Donnell pulling this stunt on Scarborough Country. FOX News story on Hume interview with Cheney here.

Wednesday evening: HuffPo at it again, with even more conspiratorial foolishness:

The real story is already emerging, if you're willing to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries since they occurrred.

Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined to investigate.

Before the right-wing commenters howl - there's documentation for all of these statements. Let's take them one by one: In addition to Cheney and Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive comments that only referred to a "third hunter," we now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland.

ALSO: via TVNewser, get a load of the soreheads at CNN, bitter that FOX got the exclusive Cheney interview!

Musing Minds has the full Cheney-Hume transcript here. Expose The Left has the video clip here. Hume says Cheney admits to having one beer earlier in the day. No doubt the left will assume he actually downed a 12-pack just before picking up the shotgun.

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