Do I care that Lewinski smoked the executive pole? No. Do I care that Clinton lied about it under oath? Yes. One is a crime, the other isn't.

Cheney's inability to take responsibility for his actions, him being incapable of apologizing and him blaming his staffer for the stamp snafu speak volumes about the man's character. Not that he had much credibility to begin with with me.

I would. But during those 24 hours with my friend, I'd say to at least one person in my huge staff that because I'm the VP of the US, we should report this to my boss and send out a press release. Because it's the responsible thing to do.

No crime here. Accident.

Look, like I said several times, I understand why it's a story. I can even understand that maybe it would have been a bit more responsible for him to say something. But I just can't bring myself to think it's a big deal. Unless he was paying people off to keep quiet about it, I don't care.

I'll give you that. Would it have been a crime if it were someone else? I don't know, but I wonder.

-----------

By Cheney not saying anything, we're left to wonder. We're left to fill in the blanks. To many, including me, this is being seen as another example of people in this Administration thinking they're above the law and need not explain anything. Wrong.

There are tons of people who feel that this event is not a non-issue. 2,885 news stories on this one incident on Google News. That's a lot.

I know, and that bothers me. It's inflating nothing into something, imo, and makes an easy target for administration supporters to pick apart us "liberal whiners". I really dislike it when "my side" (whatever that means) goes off on something with such little justification.

Typical liberal spin from your side.:) ;)

Ever seen a full grown one - butt ugly suckers. Almost worse than cats.

I am actually not bothered by the missing stamp or the initial lack of reporting.

Perhaps the staffers are lying through their hoo-hoos, but I've been in too many situations myself where I've called to find out what was needed for some activity, trusted the word of the employee, and then discovered that oh, I don't have this other thing that they recently decided to require and don't have their employees who answer the "call for information" phone tell people about.

As for lack of reporting - I don't particularly care. There are so many actual newsworthy happenings that I'd rather spend my brain power pondering.

I am a little disappointed. I'm disappointed anytime a public figure chooses silence instead of teaching. This is a perfect teaching opportunity. In my fantasy world, the VP would make a public statement about how this incident demonstrates how important safety is when hunting, that even experienced hunters can make mistakes, and maybe even what he or the unintentional target will do differently next time.

Of course he's not required to do that. He's not even obligated to do that. But if he had, I would have been impressed.

Oh, and no, I've never been hunting. I did do some target practice with a bow and arrow and was quite good at it, but that was a long time ago.

I totally agree. There are stories out there that get so much press and get blown into a huge countrywide issue. It's confusing. It also makes me feel like anything I do could get blown up into a story on Yahoo or MSN...

Maybe there are more news outlets than actual news stories. Seems like everything is news now. Seems like all of our news places have become tabloids.

But I disagree with people out there when they say the media is liberal. That's hooey. The media is all about what's popular to criticize...

:shrug:

Ya know, I also feel that the Danish cartoons were a non-story, but a whole lot of Muslim rioters felt differently ... and made it a story.

This is a news story if enough people think it is.


Seems like enough people do.




I'm one of them. Moving this thread to the 'Grind.

It's a story, whether the White House thinks so or not. The excuses given for not reporting it, and then deferring to the owner of the ranch, are about the lamest I've seen in a long time. I can't figure out if it's simply arrogance on the VP's part (I don't have to tell anyone!) or if they were just trying to figure out a way to play it down, but I am amused by imagining possible scenarios for the latter. I am sure it was just a dumb accident, and in a way it humanizes Cheney to me, but to try and say it's not a story is erroneous. He's the VP, for God's sake! Of course people are going to want to read about it, but their lapse in reporting has made it much more of a story than it would have been. It could have been downplayed as a Gerald FOrd moment, but now conspiracy theorists will have a field day. I am also amused by the righteous indignation of the Press Corps and some of their comments to McClellan- they are genuinly indignant about the perceived lapse of protocol, and you can really see the ego's coming out as well.:rolleyes:


Darn good thing Cheney travels with a medical team, eh?

Edited to add: More news on the VP's shooting vistim.