Just a quick (for me) thought to say simply, I like Dick Cheney. When the typically laconic Wyoming “cowboy” does speak, liberals fear to argue directly with him. He’s direct, to the point, and able to cut through the fog of doublespeak and eviscerate the two-faced. The worst thing he ever did is shoot his partner, but under the context of bird hunting, this is simply not as much as a faux-pas as one might think.

I’ll just put it out there: I shot my bird-hunting partner once. We were dove-hunting in some heavy mesquite-bush junk in SE California. We were both working in the same direction, about 70 yards apart, both shooting 12ga. Wingmasters, when a low-flying bullet (a dove) came whistling from behind and right between us. At some point in dove hunting, since the birds don’t follow that gentlemanly “BS” that Ruark’s bobwhites did, your shooting becomes instinctive, and this time was no different. I just happened to jump the bird before my friend did. I tracked the bird, about 20 feet above the ground, and shot. It was a good shot, and I couldn’t see anyone else at the time, but it turned out that one of the #7 1/2 shot flew out of the pattern and caught my partner under the eye. I was freaking out- he was quite a bit more circumspect. “You were hunting… really hunting. That’s just the way it is.” Ok, so Dick, by comparison, was hunting quail, but, if I recall, they were TEXAS quail: bigger and more ornery!

I can easily see Dick Cheney being that focused on the hunt. It happens, and he felt badly, but that’s just the way it is. What I feel badly about is that our former V.P. has to come out of the open country of Wyoming to deal with all this moronic drivel being created behind his back. I sure hope he’s training some protoge’ somewhere- losing Cheney’s insightful, keen perspective in the political world is akin to losing Buckley in the conservative, apologetic world. Dick Cheney is a good man. That’s a rarity in and of itself.