Seriously, I’m starting to think that the US Vice President Cheney might have to step down because of the shooting accident… just look at the quote from Yahoo! News –

WASHINGTON – Vice President
Dick Cheney apparently broke the No. 1 rule of hunting: be sure of what you’re shooting at. …
Hunting safety experts interviewed Monday agreed it would have been a good idea for Whittington to announce himself – something he apparently didn’t do, according to a witness. But they stressed that the shooter is responsible for knowing his surroundings and avoiding hitting other people.”

Posing as a tough guy while not being able to shoot straight is something I imagine doesn’t go down well with a significant part of the VP’s constituency… it would be a blow to the administration, of course, but it’s just the kind of thing that cannot happen to a White House already on the defense. Sure, the President has been a little less under fire lately, after all, he pledged to spend the equivalent of about 3 hours of Iraq-money on figuring out a way how reduce the American dependency on oil. But still, with the positioning for the next race already in full swing, this is just the kind of thing that a President cannot afford.

While Cheney stepping down over this would prove each and every prejudice about the irrationality of US public discourse right, you’d just have to admire the irony – he’s been an active part of an administration which, slowly even by their own account, has been busy shooting without knowing what they were shooting at for the last 4 years. And now that did not intend to do that for once he’s actually hitting someone – and, in a way, himself, of course.