Look out - Dick's got a gun!

We have all sorts of fun down here in Texas. No doubt you've heard that over the weekend, our illustrious veep accidently shot a companion while on a quail hunting trip near Kingsville. Cheney profusely apologized to his victim, who was hospitalized with serious birdshot pellet wounds to his face, neck, and chest. The accident happened on Saturday, but was not reported publicly by the vice president's office until Sunday afternoon -- and then only after an account of the incident appeared on a local newspaper's web site. That long delay was the subject of a testy exchange today between reporters and White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who faced dozens of questions about whether Cheney had followed proper protocol, and why a private citizen had broken the story. Look for the affair to be Leno and Letterman late-show joke fodder for the rest of the week.

Conspiracy theorists take note: the incident occurs not long after Steven Bradbury, the acting head of the US Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, suggested that under certain circumstances, the President has the authority to order the killing of terrorist suspects on U.S. soil (source: Newsweek magazine). The man shot by Cheney, 78-year old Austin attorney Harry Whittington, is hardly known as a suspected terrorist, but the seriously paranoid and/or deranged might find some coincidence in the timing of these two events.

As far as I know, no black helicopters were involved.