Unless you have been living in a cave, you have heard of the Cheney shooting.  Some facts are here for posterity.  Cheney and one of his 78-year old lawyer friends, HarryWhittington,  went hunting on  Katherine Armstrong’s Ranch in South Texas last week when Cheney shot Whittingon in the face.  The press was livid that Cheney and company (his lawyer friend and two other women - Katherine Armstrong and Pamela Willeford, US ambassador to Switzerland) covered up the incident for over night before releasing information. 

After the heat was turned up by the white house press corps, Cheney decided to run to Fox news for an interview.  Fox convienently left out the video in which his interviewer, Brit Hume, asked Cheney if there was any drinking.  Cheney said he had a beer at lunch hours before the incident.

MSNBC also participated in the cleansing.   Dan Abrams is on MSNBC giving Cheney a pass, saying that "The Vice President didn’t do anything wrong" and finding nothing irregular about the fact that he was not interviewed by law enforcement officials for 15 hours after the incident.   Catherine Armstrong told MSNBC,  "There may be a beer or two in there," she said, ‘but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.’".  Later the network removed that quote from the transcript.

 The Nation Magazine reported that Cheney has a previous troubles with irresponsible alcohol consumption.  They reported Cheney was thrown out of Yale for drinking and garnered two DUI’s during his college years.

For those of us that are not Vice-President of the United States who shoot hunting companions in Webb County Texas, they don’t get quite the pass. From the San Antonio Express-News, June 3, 2003:

Juan Garza Mendoza, 34, an employee of the ranch, was charged Monday with manslaughter, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison….

Mendoza had apparently hit Barrera Vasquez while shooting at a feral hog, and immediately contacted authorities after the shooting, Hurd said.

Sheriff Garza said interviews with three of the victim’s Mexican traveling companions and the others in the ranch hunting party led him to rule out anything but an accidental shooting.

"They mistakenly shot a human being," he said. "It’s reckless. It’s inexcusable."