Quailgate: Cheney Injures Fellow Hunter in Friendly Fire

Top 10 reasons the vice president waited 18 hours to reveal he shot a 78 year-old man in the face:

10. Hoping war with Iran would break-out and nobody would notice.

9. Didn't want to upstage Condi on "Meet the Press."

8. Sober enough to shoot, not sober enough to place a phone call.

7. Waiting for the story to get leaked, then demand an investigation of the so-called "Secret Service."

6. Ironically, Whittington was the designated "let's get our story straight" guy on the trip.

5. "Queer Eye" marathon on Bravo Saturday night.

4. Erasing Whittington's existence prior to the shooting proved more difficult than expected.

3. Incident occurred minutes after Excuses 'R Us closed for the weekend.

2. Scope and type of wounds would reveal Cheney's sources and methods and leave him vulnerable to Al Quail-da.

1. He just didn't care.

***Interestingly enough, Mr C didn't have the proper stamp or license to even be hunting quail in Texas, according to the area's game warden. Just another example of this administration's total disregard for the rules that the rest of us live by.



Cheney Injures Fellow Hunter in Friendly Fire
By Phil Maggitti
Feb 13, 2006, 08:49

Apparently Vice President Dick Cheney did his country a favor when he obtained sixteen deferments in order to avoid military service in Viet Nam. While the vice president was hunting in South Texas on Saturday, he mistook a fellow hunter for a quail and shot him in the face five times with a pellet gun.

The victim of this friendly fire was Harry Whittington, 78, a prominent Austin lawyer.Mr. Whittington screamed, "Jesus Christ, Dick," before toppling to the ground from the force of Mr. Cheney's barrage. Mr. Whittington was rushed to a hospital in an ambulance the vice president always has on stand-by when he goes hunting. Mr. Whittington is currently in the intensive care unit, after suffering a heart attack.

Cheney's pride, however, appeared to be intact "He had the same advance reports from the Texas Small Game Commission that we had. He should have known where we'd be, and he should have announced his presence. Given the treacherous nature of the enemy, quail hunting is a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later business.

According to Ms. Armstrong, who had been shooting with the party earlier in the afternoon but had retired to the vice president's Humvee for a nip, Mr. Whittington left the group to go looking for a quail he had just shot. Ordinarily that task would have fallen to the native beater who accompanies the vice president on hunting trips, but the beater was nursing a minor wound he had suffered earlier in the day when the vice president's gun had gone off accidentally while the vice president was loading it.

"While Harry was trying to find his bird," said Ms. Armstrong, "Dick and Tom Wilkinson moved on to another covey and were flushing it out with the help of the CIA agents who always accompany the vice president when he goes hunting."

Ms. Armstrong said the CIA unit was "a few beans short of a burrito" because several of its members were burying a hunting dog Mr. Cheney had killed accidentally that morning.

At some point Mr. Whittington approached Mr. Cheney from the rear. Mr. Cheney, who claimed he was unaware that Mr. Whittington "had sneaked up" behind him, swung around and fired his .28-gauge Charlton Heston model pellet gun five times. Mr. Cheney said he did not see Mr. Whittington, even though he was wearing an orange hunter's vest and was standing ten yards away from Mr. Cheney at the time.

Road Trip With the Mavs

As you must already know, football in Texas is huge. High school football in Texas is the stuff legends are made of.....For example Friday Night Lights. This highly charged, albeit somewhat incorrect view of Odessa Permian's MOJO magic, was just a hint of what football means to Texas folks.

Yes, I know it's February. Yes, I know it's a long time until two- a- day practices roll around next August. So why am I talking about it now? Because today was the day that the Texas University Interscholastic League, which oversees high school football, realigned the districts. We'll be living with their little plan for 2 years.

The UIL, in all its wisdom, did a number on my favorite team, the Eastland Mavericks. The idea of a district is to group similarly sized teams in a specific geographical area into districts for scheduling competitions.

New to Eastland's district, is the pride of Wise county...Boyd High School. Yes, Wise county--read that "many moons from Eastland."

My point is this: Boyd is 95.9 miles one way from Eastland. That's 191.8 miles roundtrip. At state reimbursement rates, that's $85.35 a trip in an individual car. Imagine the cost of roading multiple buses for team, band, cheerleaders etc.

At a time when every Texas state agency is being forced into budget slashing and "making do", the UIL boys have a brain fart and come up with this dandy little money saving configuration.

What WERE they thinkin'?????

Groundhog Day....for the Biologically Impaired

Every February 2, media folks from around the country throng into Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, for the annual appearance of Punxsutawney Phil, the world's most elite groundhog.

Why the big deal? Here's the theory: If Phil sees his shadow, winter will last six more weeks. If he doesn't see his shadow, winter is over and spring is on the way. Riiiiiiiggghhhtt!

But wait a second. Let's take a closer look. What makes Phil see his shadow? Sunshine, naturally. So, why can't we just look out the window and see if it's sunny? Wouldn't that allow us to cut out the the middle rodent, so to speak? Or do groundhogs have some special weather-predicting prowess?

Nope, sorry. The whole thing is nothing more than a tourist attraction. I hate to break it to you, but Phil comes from a zoo. His agent apparently worked out this cushy Groundhog Day gig--one annual appearance in exchange for year-round maintenance and a signing bonus.

So what's really going on? Well, even though groundhogs may not have any special powers, there is still amazing talent on display here. Hibernation...period. When groundhogs come out of their burrows they're not doing it for our benefit, they're checking to see if it's time to stop hibernating.

Not too shabby for a rodent, huh??