Today, Rush paraphrased and quoted from The Anchoress’ post Birdshot, Vice Presidents and Strategeries. On part he quoted was this:

Middling scenario: Mr. Whittington recovers, but David Gregory never gets over not getting a press release handed to him and spends the next year alternately weeping and hectoring Scott McClellen like a sexually frustrated fishwife. Provoked beyond endurance, McClellen leaps over his podium, picks up Helen Thomas by the ankles and begins to throttle Gregory with her. This does not end well.

Which contains a link to this very blog!

So we were kinda, sorta on Rush in a roundabout kind of way.

Cartago Delenda Est has a audio of Rush where you can hear it for yourself.

Also, go vote for the Anchoress For Best Political Blog (once every day) at The Catholic Blog Awards.

If you haven’t already checked out Hugh Hewitt’s interview/interrogation of Lawrence O’Donnell do it now. It’s pretty eye opening. The guys at Powerline also do a good assessment of the interview.

What I found particularily remarkable is O’Donnell’s attempts to compare this to Chappaquiddick. In his own words:

All we’re doing is guessing, because the Vice President forced us to guess, because he did exactly what Ted Kennedy did at Chappaquiddick. Exactly, Hugh. The same behavior.

Cheney was with a large group of people before, during, and after the shooting. It was immediately reported to the authorities, and the victim was immediately given medical attention by Cheney’s own medical team. But apparently that’s of no consequence if it wasn’t immediately reported to the press. It appears that to O’Donnell, the crime of not immediately reporting an accident to the press is up there with not informing anyone of the fact that a woman lay dying in a submerged automobile.

The narcissism of the MSM continues.

We have two recent press releases from the ACLU.

1. Gut National Security! We all know about the ACLU’s lawsuit against NSA, its FOIA request over it, and its constant urging of Congress for full disclosure of what should be classified information.

The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the House Judiciary Committee to adopt several resolutions that would formally request any and all documents relating to the illegal National
Security Agency domestic spying program authorized by President Bush.

“The need for a comprehensive investigation into the NSA’s domestic surveillance is essential to find out exactly which laws were broken,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “

Notice that while they use the word “illegal”, and insist that laws were broken, they don’t even know exactly what laws were broken. WTF? I thought that in America that everyone was considered innocent until proven guilty, but all of the sudden per ACLU the government is guilty until proven innocent. The way the program is was explained, according to all lawyers that worked in this field, it is completely legal because it falls under the powers of the Executive branch. The President’s job is to protect the Nation, wage war when appropriate, and in this case approve by Congress when they said, “use any appropriate force necessary.” It is also the Executive branch’s authority to collect international intelligence, and the president does not need Congress’ approval. This comes under the “seperation of powers”, despite the fact that Congress does not like this. This is a never ending battle between the Congress and the Executive branch. Congress thinks that everything has to be run past it. When Congress says that it is the Executive branch that is trying to grab power….think….it is Congress that is actually the one trying to grab power for themselves.

If this were the only government effort to protect Americans that the ACLU opposed, one could easily write it off as a misguided pursuit of an absolutist ideaology of liberty. However, the ACLU seems to have a problem with everything dealing with National Security. They oppose the Patritot Act, airline security measures, searches across the board, and much more.

But lets get down to the real agenda.
Continue reading →

Expose the Left has video and a link to Fox News’ transcript.

Hume: Mr. Vice President, how’s Mr. Whittington?

Cheney: Well, the good news is that he’s doing very well. I talked with him yesterday after they’d discovered the heart problem, but that appears now to have been pretty well resolved and the reporting today is very good.

Hume: How did you feel when you heard about that?

Cheney: Well, it’s a great relief, but I won’t obviously be totally at ease until he’s home. He’s going to be in the hospital apparently for a few more days and the problem obviously is that there’s always a possibliity of complications in someone who’s 78 or 79 years old. He’s a great man. He’s in great shape. A good friend. And our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.

Hume: How long have you known him?

Cheney: I first met him in Vail, Colorado when I worked for Jerry Ford about 30 years ago. And this is the first time I’d ever hunted with him.

Hume: Would you describe him as a close friend? A family acquaintance?

Cheney: No. An acquaintance.

Hume: Tell me what happened.

Cheney: Well basically we were hunting quail late in the day.

Hume: Describe the setting.

Cheney: It’s south Texas, wide open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it’s wild quail, some of the best quail in the country. I’ve gone there to the Armstrong ranch for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years. A group of us had hunted all day on Saturday.

Hume: How many?

Cheney: Oh, probably ten people. We were all together, about ten people who were guests at the ranch. There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. The coveys flushed, {name of someone} shot and got a bird. Harry couldn’t find his, it was in deep cover, so he went off to find it. The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction.

Hume: Away from him.

Cheney: Away from him. Where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right.

Hume: There was just two of you then.

Cheney: There was just two us at that point. The guide or outrider between us. And of course there was this entourage behind us. All the cars and so forth that followed me around when I’m out there {something}. But a bird flushed and went to my right off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird and at that second saw Harry standing there. Didn’t know he was there.

Hume: You pulled the trigger when you saw him.

Cheney: Well I saw him fall basically. It happened so fast.

Hume: Did he wear a vest?

Cheney: He was dressed in orange and he dressed properly, but he was also, there was a little bit of a gully there and so he was down a little ways below land level. All I could see was the upper part of his body. When I didn’t see it at the time I shot, until after I fired. And the sun was directly behind him, that affected the vision too, I’m sure. But the image of him of him falling is something that I’ll never get out of my mind. I fired, and there’s Harry falling and it was, I’d have to say, one of the worst days of my life at that moment.

Hume: Then what?

Cheney: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away.

Hume: How far away from you was he?

Cheney: I’m guessing about thirty yards. which was a good thing. If he’d been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater.

Hume: Now is it clear that he had caught part of the shot, is that right?

Cheney: He caught part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of his face.

Hume: Right.

Cheney: His neck and upper torso on the right side of his body.

Hume: And I take it you missed the bird.

Cheney: I have no idea. You’re focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and I saw Harry there, you know everything else went out of my mind. I don’t know whether the bird went down or didn’t.

Hume: So did you run over to him?

Cheney: I ran over to him and…

Hume: And what did you see? He’s lying there…

Cheney: He was laying there on his back, obviously. Bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. One of the fortunate things was that I’ve always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician’s assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene, administering first aid.

Hume: And Mr. Whittington was conscious? Unconscious? What?

Cheney: He was conscious.

Hume: What’d you say?

Cheney: Well, I said Harry, I had no idea you were there. And…

Hume: What’d he say?

Cheney: He didn’t respond. He was breathing, conscious at that point. But he didn’t, he was, I’m sure, stunned obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. The doc was fantastic.

Hume: What did you think when you saw the injuries? How serious did they appear to you to be?

Cheney: I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious, you just don’t know at that moment. You know he’s been struck, you know that there’s a lot of shot that hit him. But you don’t know, or you think about his eyes. Fortunately he was wearing hunting glasses and that protected his eyes. You just don’t know. The key thing, as I say, initially was that the physician’s assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.

Hume: And what did you do then? Did you get up and go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

Cheney: No, I told my physician’s assistant to go with him, but the ambulance was crowded, they didn’t need another body in there. So we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters basically. By then it’s about 7:00 at night.

Hume: Was there any sense then of how he was doing?

Cheney: Well we were getting reports, but they were confused. Early reports are always wrong. The initial reports that came back from the ambulance were that he was doing well. His eyes were open. They got him into the emergency room at Kingsville.

Hume: His eyes were open when you found him.

Cheney: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him into the emergency room at the small hospital in Kingsville, checked him out further there then lifted him by helicopter there into Corpus Christi which has a big-city hospital, with all of the equipment and so forth.

Hume: So by now what time is it?

Cheney: I don’t have an exact timeline. I know he got there some time that evening. 8, 9 o’clock.

Hume: So this is several hours after …

Cheney: Well, I would say he was in Kingsville, in the emergency room, probably within less than an hour after they left the ranch.

Hume: Now you’re a seasoned hunter.

Cheney: I am. Well for the last twelve, fifteen years.

Hume: You know all the procedures and how to maintain the proper line and distance between other hunters and all that. So how, in your judgement, did this happen? What caused this? What was the responisibility here?

Cheney: Ultimately, I’m the guy who pulled the trigger. That fired the round that hit Harry. And you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time. But that’s the bottom line. And there’s no, it’s not Harry’s fault. You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that’s a moment I’ll never forget.

{commercial break}

Hume: Now what thought did give then to how, you must have known that this was, whether it was a matter of state or not, was news. What thought did you give that evening as to how this news should be transmitted?

Cheney: My first reaction, Brit, was not that I need to call the press. My first reaction was, “My friend Harry’s been shot and we’ve got to take care of him.” That evening there were other considerations, we wanted to make sure his family was taken care of. His wife was on the ranch, she wasn’t with us when it happened. We got her hooked up with the ambulance on it’s way to the hospital with Harry. He has grown children, we wanted to make sure they were notified so they didn’t hear on television that their father’d been shot. That was important too. But we also didn’t know what the outcome here was going to be. We didn’t know for sure what kind of shape Harry was in. We had preliminary reports, but they wanted to do a CAT scan, for example, to see how, whether or not there was any internal damage. Whether or not any vital organ had been penetrated by any of the shot. We did not know until Sunday morning that we could be confident that everything was probably going to be okay.

Hume: When had the family been informed?

Cheney: Well, his wife, his wife knew as he was leaving the ranch.

Hume: What about his children?

Cheney: I didn’t make the calls to the children so I don’t know exactly when those contacts were made. One of his daughters had made it to the hospital by the next day when I visited. But, one of the things I’d learned over the years is that first reports are often wrong. You need to really wait and nail it down. And there was enough variation in the reports we were getting from the hospital and so forth. A couple of people who’d been guests at the ranch went up to the hospital that evening, one of them was a doctor. He obviously had some professional capabilities in terms of being able to relay messages. But we really didn’t know until Sunday morning that Harry was probably going to be okay. That it looked like there hadn’t been any serious damage to any vital organ. That’s when we began the process of notifying the press.

Hume: You must have recognized, though, with all your experience in Washington, that this was going to be a big story.

Cheney: True. It was unprecedented. I’ve been the in business for a long time. Never seen a situation quite like this. We’ve had experiences where the President’s been shot, never had a situation where the Vice President shot somebody.

Hume: Not since Aaron Burr.

Cheney: Not since Aaron Burr.

Hume: Different circumstances.

Cheney: Different circumstances.

Hume: Well, did it occur to you that sooner was, I mean one thing that we’ve all kind of leaned over the last several decades is, if something like this happens, as a rule, sooner is better.

Cheney: Well, if it’s accurate. If it’s accurate. And this is a complicated story.

Hume: But there were some things you knew. You knew the man had been shot. You knew he was injured. You knew he was in the hospital and you knew you’d shot him.

Cheney: Correct.

Hume: And you knew, certainly by sometime that evening, that all the members of his family had been called. Otherwise you didn’t know the outcome, and you don’t know the outcome today, finally.

Cheney: As we saw, if we’d out a report Saturday night on what we’d heard then… One report said superficial injuries. If we’d gone with a statement at that point, we’d have been wrong. And it was also important, I thought, to get the story out as accurately as possible.

Hume: Now, it strikes me that you must have known that this was going to be a national story. And it does raise the question to whether you couldn’t have headed off this beltway firestorm if you’d put out the word to the national media as well as to the local newspaper so it could post it on it’s website. Wouldn’t that have been the wiser course?

Cheney: Well, who’s gonna do that? Are they going to take my word for what happened? There is obviously a…

Hume: Well obviously you could have put out the statement in the name of whoever you wanted. You could put it in the name of Mrs. Armstrong if you wanted to. She’s the one that made the statement.

Cheney: Exactly. That’s what we did. We went with Mrs. Armstrong. We had, she’s the one who put out the statement. And she was the most credible one to do it. Because she was a witness. It wasn’t me in terms of saying here’s what happened.

Hume: Understood. Now the suspicion grows in some quarters that this was an attempt to minimize it by having it first appear in a little paper, and appear like a little hunting incident in a remote corner of Texas.

Cheney: There wasn’t any way this was going to be minimized Brit. But it was important that it be accurate. I do think that what I’ve experienced over the years here in Washington, is the media outlets have proliferated, speed has become sort of a driving force, lots of times at the expense of accuracy and I wanted to make sure we got it as accurate as possible. And I think Katherine was an excellent choice. I don’t know who you can get better as the basic source for the story than the witness who saw the whole thing.

The interview continues later with a change of subject to the CIA leak investigation. I’ll get that transcribed later. (I won’t have to do this part because Fox News has already done so).

Fox is airing some excerpts from Brit Hume’s interview. I will update as they are broadcast…

Brit asked what caused the shooting.

Vice President Cheney replied:

Ultimately, I’m the guy who pulled the trigger. That fired the round that hit Harry. And you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time. But that’s the bottom line. And there’s no, it’s not Harry’s fault. You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that’s a moment I’ll never forget.

another excerpt:

Cheney:

…strong who’s a good mutual friend of both of us. Karl has hunted at the Armstrong as well.

Hume: Say that again.

Cheney: I said Karl has hunted at the Armstrong as well. And we’re both good friends of the Armstrongs and of Katherine Armstrong. Katherine suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement. That is that she put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eyewitness. She’d seen the whole thing. Secondly, she’d grown up on the ranch, she’d hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department, the game control division for the State of Texas. An acknowledged expert in all of this. And that she wanted to go to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is the local newspaper that covers that area, to a reporter she knew. And I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from someone who knew and understood hunting. And then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the website, which is the way it went out. And I thought that was the right call.

Hume: What do you think now?

Cheney: Well I still do. I still think that the accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me. I didn’t have any press people with me. I was there on a private weekend with friends on a private ranch.

and another:

Cheney: The image of him falling is something that I’ll never get out of my mind. I fired, and there’s Harry falling and it was, I must say, one of the worst days of my life at that moment.

Hume: Then what?

Cheney: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away.

Hume: How far away from you was he?

Cheney: I’m guessing about thirty yards.

more:

Cheney: …struck on the right side of his face.

Hume: Right.

Cheney: His neck and upper torso on the right side of his body.

Hume: And I take it you missed the bird.

Cheney: I have no idea. You’re focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and I saw Harry there, you know everything else went out of my mind. I don’t know whether the bird went down or didn’t.

Hume: So did you run over to him?

Cheney: I ran over to him and…

Hume: And what did you see? He’s lying there…

Cheney: He was laying there on his back, obviously. Bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. One of the fortunate things was that I’ve always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician’s assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene, administering first aid.

Hume: And Mr. Whittington was conscious? Unconscious? What?

Cheney: He was conscious.

Hume: What’d you say?

Cheney: Well, I said Harry, I had no idea you were there. And…

Hume: What’d he say?

Cheney: He didn’t respond.

Welcome Blogs For Bush readers!

Brit Hume is interviewing Dick Cheney tonight on Special Report at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Excerpts above.

Hey! You copied!	You look like a crossing guard. Besides, my hat is better!

Images courtesy of Expose the Left.

She starts with this great pic from Lucianne

and then goes on to list the best case and worse case scenarios.

Go Read!

I had a few thoughts about the partial transcript of the press briefing below:

One: You can’t really get it from the transcript, but David Gregory was almost constantly interrupting Scott McClellan.

Two: It seemed as though the only answer that would satisfy David Gregory would have been something like:

The Vice President didn’t follow protocol and call you or BlackBerry you immediately after the trigger was pulled. Therefore, the Vice President will have to spend some time in the “Vice Presidential Time Out Chair” in the corner of the Oval Office.

Three: I really think Scott McClellan issued a smackdown on David Gregory.

Update: For those arriving by search click here to see my post on David Gregory’s apology with link from there.

Partial transcript of today’s White House Press Briefing…

White House transcript here.

Gregory: …and why it took so long to disclose it publically?

McClellan: Well I think what happened has been explained. The Vice President’s office talked about it. I’ve talked about it. And I represent the President, speak for him. The Vice President’s spokeswoman speaks for him as well. So that information has been provided. We went through this pretty thoroughly yesterday.

Gregory: Does the President think that the Vice President should actually speak about it himself, not through intermediaries?

McClellan: You talk to the Vice President on a fairly frequent basis in the past, and I’m sure you will in the future as well.

Gregory: But he shouldn’t really have to address it specifically?

McClellan: Well he has. Through his office.

Gregory: Ok, let me ask you this. Is the President concerned that the Vice President made decisions about the public disclosure of this incident that are clearly at odds with how you and others advising the President disclose personal information about the President’s activities?

McClellan: Let me just say this, because I sense that there’s some follow-up questions that you all have. First of all, I think we went through this pretty thoroughly yesterday and I worked to answer the questions to the best of ability in a forthright manner, based on the facts that I knew. There were some very legitimate questions that were asked. As I indicated, I always believe that you can look back and work to do better. I indicated that yesterday. I think today where we’re focusing our efforts, is on what are the most pressing priorities before the American people? That’s what we’re focusing on. I understand you still have some, if you want to continue to spend time on that, that’s fine, but we’re moving on to the priorities of the American people. That’s where our focus is.

Gregory: That’s clear and that’s your perogative. Now I’ve got my job to do which is try to get you to answer that question. Does the President think it’s appropriate for the Vice President to essentially make decisions at odds with the public disclosure process of this White House?

McClellan: Well, I think that I’ve expressed my views when we went through this yesterday. That’s what I was trying to… that’s what I was trying to indicate to you…

Gregory: Does the President have a view about how the Vice President’s conducted himself?

McClellan: Again, that’s what I’ve… I indicated to you yesterday what our views were. And we went throught this…

Gregory: I don’t recall you sharing the President’s view.

McClellan: Yeah, but can I finish responding? I am glad to answer your questions. I was very respectful. I was very respectful and responsive to you all…

Gregory: The Vice President basically decided on his own to not disclose this which is at odds with how you do business and how the President does business. Right?

McClellan: I don’t want to make this about anything other than what it is. It is what it is David. I was very respectful and responsive to your questions yesterday. I provided you the information that I knew based on the facts that were available. And we’ve been through this pretty thoroughly. And I’m just not…Wait, wait. I’m just not going to go back through it again. I’d appreciate if you’d let me respond fully before you jump in.

Gregory: All right, but, hold on one second. I’ve got one final question…

McClellan: Other people in this room have questions, and we’ve got an event coming up.

Gregory: I’m not getting answers here Scott and I’m trying to be forthright with you. But don’t tell me that you’re giving us complete answers when you’re not actually answering the question. Because everybody knows what is an answer and what is not an answer. And the final …

McClellan: David, now you want to make this about you. And it’s not about you, it’s about what happened and that’s what I’m trying to do…

Gregory: I’m sorry that you feel that way, but that’s not what I’m trying to do.

McClellan: And I’m trying to provide answers to the questions.

Gregory: One final question, since that one wasn’t answered. Is it appropriate for the Vice President to have waited 14 hours after the incident before he spoke with the law enforcement officials? And do you think that an average citizen would have been accorded that same amount of time before having to answer questions about a shooting incident?

McClellan: That is what was arranged with the local law enforcement authorities. You ought to ask them.

That was two questions for your final question Mr. Gregory…

Blogs for Bush caught a few bits that I missed – added in italics above.