"Having admitted unparalleled corruption, defendant Randall H. Cunningham now comes before the 
Court to be sentenced for his stunning betrayal of the public trust."
That's the first sentence of the 35 page sentencing memorandum federal prosecutors presented to U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns in the Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham case. They want Duke to serve the max -- 10 years in prison.
It's the most detailed and eye-popping recounting of Cunningham's various bad acts, bribes and shenanigans yet.
And we just posted the whole thing at the TPM Document Collection.
A few highlights, for lack of a better word ...
Page 6, item b. Duke's staffer catches Duke buying a Suburban at under market value from Mitchell Wade. Duke tells staffer to "Stay the f--- out of my personal business." "In an attempt to right, and conceal, this obviously corrupt transaction" Duke's staffers falisfy his DMV application and try to get him to pay up to make up the difference. Duke passes on the opportunity.
Page 9, item i. We learn about the roots of the GOP contempt for the capital gains tax. Duke asks for special bribe earmarked for payment of capital gains taxes on sale of house.
Page 12, item a. Duke shares ride back from the antique store bribery junket with Mitchell Wade, expresses "his appreciation for [Wade's] willingness to bribe him" and tells Wade he'll make him "somebody".
Page 15, item e. Duke demands that Mitchell Wade buy him a used Rolls Royce. Duke then has Wade pay thousands to restore the car. Duke then engineers bogus paper 'sale' of the car to Wade to pocket still more money. Cunningham retains ownership of car.
Page 16, item f. Duke arranges to purchase the yacht 'Buoy Toy' from gay couple with his "business partner" Mitchell Wade. Duke then renames boat the 'Duke Stir'. When explaining his reasons for changing the yacht's name, Duke quips, "I bought the boat, not the lifestyle."
Page 19. Unnamed Duke staffer confronts Duke over millions of dollars in bribes he has accepted, asks Duke to either resign or not seek reelection. Duke thinks it over, decides he'll stay in Congress. Staffer resigns.
Page 20, item a, following. Duke embarks on reign of witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
--Josh Marshall
Remember Duke Cunningham?
He was crooked before crooked was cool. Way back into last summer.
The prosecutors came out with their sentencing request today. And apparently Duke's cooperation didn't wring any further reductions from his recommended sentence.
Prosecutors asked U.S. District Court Judge Larry Burns to give Cunningham the maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars, a sentence Cunningham's attorney Lee Blalack called "grossly excessive."
Speaking of gross, Cunningham has not lost the power to amaze. In court documents filed by prosecutors comes this, as described by Seth Hettena of the AP ...
The prosecution's sentencing memorandum included a copy of a “bribe menu” written under the Congressional seal on Cunningham's office stationary. One column of figures represented the millions of dollars in contracts that could be “ordered” from Cunningham, according to prosecutors. The right column showed the amount of bribes Cunningham demanded in return.According to the sentencing memorandum, Cunningham offered co-conspirator No. 2 – identified elsewhere as defense contractor Mitchell Wade – $16 million in contracts in exchange for a $140,000 bribe, which came in the form a 42-foot yacht, the Duke-Stir.
Takes your breath away, don't it? We'll have more soon.
--Josh Marshall
Let's put this headline in amber and pack it into the time capsule. Let folks know what it was like.
Sic Transit.
--Josh Marshall
Delay (no capital-L, sorry) sought in Abramoff sentencing. More time needed to cooperate.
--Josh Marshall
Roll Call (sub.req.): "The Department of Justice has instructed the Senate Ethics Committee to steer clear of any investigations into actions involving ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, warning the panel it has “concerns” that any such probes could interfere with its long-running investigation."
--Josh Marshall
Harry Whittington released from hospital in Corpus Christi.
Says Whittington: "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week."
--Josh Marshall
Senator Specter won't be outdone by Sen. Santorum in ethics shenanigans. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Wow, that doesn't sound too smart.
Readers of this site know there's always been some pretty telling circumstantial evidence that Jack Abramoff's business partner Adam Kidan had a role in the mob-style execution of their estranged SunCruz business partner Gus Boulis.
Two of three eventually arrested for the murder, each known 
mafiosos, were on the SunCruz payroll at the time of the Boulis killing, both for work like 'catering' and 'security' they don't seem to have done.
In any case, the apparent leader of the three, the one Kidan paid most of the money to, was Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello.
Back in September, Big Tony was arrested at his home in Howard Beach, New York and later transferred down to Florida where he is now awaiting trial for Boulis' murder. During that time, beside visits from family and attorneys, Big Tony received only one visit.
Who? Right. Adam Kidan.
Kidan wouldn't comment when called by the Sun-Sentinel. His attorney, Joseph Conway told the paper that the meeting was "personal".
--Josh Marshall
On observation of no particular political import, but interesting nonetheless. From TPM Reader DW ...
Here's a painfully obvious observation. Untold millions of tax dollars are spent on secret service agents and what-not, and the veep is prancing around the wilds with a bunch of other men of a certain age, all carrying GUNS? Let's assume that there isn't anything particularly different about Mr. Cheney that would cause him to make this kind of mistake, which then means that any of his hunting buddies could have been the one to go oops, and he could have been on the business end of the fire-stick. Boom! What were they thinking?
Makes ya think.
--Josh Marshall
Are you over-insured in health insurance terms? Do you feel like you should be spending more out of pocket? If you say yes to both questions, then you and President Bush agree about what's wrong with the nation's health care system.
"When you go buy a car you're able to shop and compare," says President Bush. "And yet in health care that's just not happening in America today."
Is figuring out which cancer test to take like buying a car? Figuring out whether to get that headache checked?
What planet does President Bush live on exactly?
Functioning markets are wonderful thing. Our whole economic system is based on them. But any serious student of markets understands that to function they require at least a threshold level of informed and rational actors. Neither is really the case on the consumer end of the health care market.
That sets aside the question of the moral equities involved in placing more price pressures on individuals as they choose the quality of health care they get for their families. And it entirely ignores the really straightforward point that isolating health care purchasing to individuals pretty much guarantees that the cost to the individual is much higher.
This is bad policy and bad politics. The president's opposition would do well by their country to attack him on every point.
--Josh Marshall
A short follow-up on this question of the vice president's alleged power to declassify. In this post, Steven Aftergood, who knows a lot about these things, says that the vice president probably doesn't have this authority, except in cases where he or his office did the original classification.
However, several TPM lawyer-readers tell me that is probably too narrow a reading of the order and that Cheney probably does have the authority, or at least a colorable claim to it.
We'll bring you more as we learn more.
--Josh Marshall
Fascinating.
Byron York has a piece up at NRO examining a little-scrutinized Executive Order 13292, dated March 25, 2003, while the Niger-Wilson-Plame story was bubbling away out of public view.
Byron has the precise details. But the gist is that the president delegated what would appear to be all his powers to classify information. That in itself is a stunning aggrandizement of power for the vice president, who historically (and constitutionally) has very little de jure power. And given his penchant for government secrecy, it's little surprise that Cheney would press to have such power.
But most of the discussion about this turns on the power to declassify. (Indeed, in the key passage in Cheney's interview with Brit Hume yesterday, he makes the connection.) It would make sense to me if, in the administrative or statute law, the power to classify assumes or equates to the power to declassify as well. But the executive order Byron notes doesn't speak specifically of the power to declassify.
Anyone have any more details or information relevant to this?
Late Update: Here is the full text of the executive order.
--Josh Marshall
As luck would have it, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday making my way through a really nasty stomach virus. So I didn't actually catch the Cheney interview live (or, at least, live as broadcast).
But this Kevin Drum catch is great ...
Finally, Hume suggested that since this was obviously a national story, Cheney should have informed the national press and gotten the word out sooner. Cheney's reply: "It isn't easy to do that. Are they going to take my word for what happened?"Seriously? Cheney's story is that his own credibility is so poor that a statement from him would have been worthless? Is he really going to stick to that as his explanation?
That's great. It's the Cheney-patented self-reinforcing cycle of bamboozlement and mendacity. I've covered up so many things that no one trusts me. So you can hardly expect me to start coming clean now, right?
--Josh Marshall
Oh, TPM Reader AC is right. You just can't make this stuff up.
Earlier I noted David Brooks' reference to this site in today's column in the Times. And as part of that I noted David's past record of issuing rather crude aspersions of 'conspiracy theorizing' against anyone who had the temerity to question the neo-conservative turn of US foreign policy under the Bush administration.
Now, here's where it gets fun.
By way of example, I linked to this post from January 2004 which referenced one of Brooks' lowest moments in the 'conspiracy' mugging game, the instance in which he implied that the term 'neocon' is in fact an anti-semitic slur. (I think he actually had to issue a retraction in the Times for that lapse; but perhaps someone else can remind me.)
In any case, TPM Reader AC went back to the original column (which is of course behind the Times' Times-Select veil) in which this choice paragraph appears (emphasis added) ...
Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans. The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.
As you can see, crude and a tad vulgar (especially in the three grafs which follow the one above), but occasionally, well ... prescient?
--Josh Marshall
Earlier, we posted the Justice Department's letter stating that the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the authorization of the NSA wiretaps.
The DoJ was responding to a letter from Rep. Hinchey (D-NY) and three other Democrats requesting an investigation.
You can read their letter here.
--Paul Kiel
This issue of Dick Cheney's claimed right to declassify information at will is a very big deal -- both in terms of the White House's continued claims to be above the law and for Scooter Libby's trial defense.
Basically, Cheney is claiming that if Cheney decides to leak it, then by definition, it's not classified. Sort of like daubing holy water over the information in question. There's some question over whether the president might have that ability; no question, as far as I can see, that the vice president has no such right.
This is another of Cheney's efforts to claim that he is unbounded by the law. Steve Clemons has more.
--Josh Marshall
Justice Department investigating its own role in warrantless wiretap case?
According to a letter which Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) received today from the Justice Department's Counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility, the OPR has opened an investigation into "the Department of Justice's role in authorizing, approving and auditing certain surveillance activities on the National Security Agency [NSA], and whether such activities are permissible under existing law."
Here's an AP article here.
See the letter here.
--Josh Marshall
I notice that in David Brooks' column today he singles out this humble blog as an example of the "the keyboard jockeys [who] had a responsibility to sniff up vast conspiracies and get lost in creepy minutiae."
Now, speaking of everyone playing their assigned roles, I understand that David's role is to clothe all this stuff over with the gauze of morality and forgetfullness. But one thing did jump out at me -- David's use of the phraseology of 'conspiracies' and particularly those of a 'vast' sort.
This was precisely the language David used back in 2003 and 2004 when his role of choice was running interference against anyone and everyone who questioned the execution of or motives behind the Iraq War -- or alleging anti-semitism. Of course, most of those suspicions have now been amply borne out. So for David's heuristic betterment, alleging conspiracies means actually alleging conspiracies. Questioning the accounts of known dissemblers is just common sense.
--Josh Marshall
The bell tolls for Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA). That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
Adweek: "The Bush administration spent $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars on 137 contracts with advertising agencies over the past two-and-a-half years, according to a Government Accountability Office report released by House Democrats Monday."
--Josh Marshall
I've gotten several emails like today. This one's from TPM Reader RK ...
From the AP article you cited on Monday:"Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, said it happened toward the end of the hunt, when it was still sunny but as darkness was encroaching and they were preparing to go inside. She said Whittington made a mistake by not announcing that he had walked up to rejoin the hunting line, and Cheney didn't see him as he tried to down a bird.
Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press."
She talks like she SAW what happened at the scene, but she clearly had no idea what happened because she thought it was Cheney's heart. So where exactly was she and what did she ACTUALLY see?
I think it's important for us to realize -- as investigators quickly do -- that even good faith eyewitnesses often come up with very jumbled accounts of things they did see happen. But this is a good question. Did Armstrong really see what happened?
--Josh Marshall
One factoid and one question on the Cheney shootout.
I asked earlier how big an outfit the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department is and how thorough their investigation was, if there was one.
Turns out it's a pretty big outfit, at least relative to population. There are 414 residents of Kenedy County. And according to the local paper, there are 11 people on the Sheriff's Department staff.
Now, on to another matter. All of the speculation here centers on what actually happened when this accident took place. Were they really 30 yards apart, were there obvious signs of negligence, etc.
Cheney, Armstrong and even Whittington are all interested parties. But as TPM Reader JS notes there's another source of information.
Secret Service personnel were, or should have been, with Cheney when this all happened. There must be an incident report about what happened. It should be fairly detailed. And it could clear up a lot of questions. Will the White House release the report?
--Josh Marshall
Thirty-seven, the age I turned today, seems like the most unremarkable of ages -- stranded out there between landmark numbers like thirty-five or forty, with nothing particular to say for itself. But my mother died when she was thirty-seven -- just a touch less than twenty-five years ago. So, for me, thirty-seven has always been an age mixed with awe, fear and wonder -- like a lamppost or beacon that I was slowly approaching in my own life.
--Josh Marshall
These gets fairly deep into the weeds of the Whittington case. But one point that garnered a lot of discussion yesterday was just how the birdshot got lodged in or near Whittington's heart.
What most people seemed to be saying yesterday was that the most likely possibility was that it was from a wound to the neck. Pellet goes into the neck, gets into an artery and then makes its way to the heart.
But Whittington's doctors said yesterday that they had known there was a pellet lodged near his heart from the beginning. So that seems to complicate the migration theory.
Now the Times has an article quoting Dr. O. Wayne Isom, the chairman of heart and chest surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College, saying that it is much more likely "that the pellet lodged in or touched the heart when Mr. Whittington was shot."
--Josh Marshall
A question: How big is the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department? They rapidly concluded that "this was nothing more than a hunting accident."
But how big an outfit is it exactly? Kenedy County has a population of 414 people, which makes it the fourth smallest county in the United States.
The 50,000 acre Armstrong Ranch is in Kenedy County. So I figure the Armstrongs probably have a lot of pull in county government. So, just a question: how thorough was the investigation of what happened?
--Josh Marshall
This should be good for a laugh. Dick Cheney will break his silence about the shooting -- on Fox, with Brit Hume. Wouldn't a media interview be better?
--Josh Marshall
Here perhaps we're in need of some expert insight from hunters and doctors. But the latest round of news raises this question in my mind. Would the weapon and ammunition Dick Cheney shot have the force to imbed pellets near Whittington's heart at 30 yards? A hunter wears a decent amount of clothing over the chest, remember. So these pellets would have to have pierced his clothing, his skin and then lodged inside the body cavity, somewhere near or around his heart. The shot came from the right and the heart is on the left so that might add to the amount of tissue needing to be traversed -- but without more specifics that's hard to know for sure. That takes a decent amount of force at 30 yards. Any thoughts from our TPM hunters and clinicians?
--Josh Marshall
As we've been telling you for a few weeks, now-former Ohio senate candidate Paul Hackkett was scheduled to be our guest this week at TPMCafe's Table for One. You've probably already heard that last night Hackett announced that he's dropping out of the race. He's got a post up at Table for One now explaining his decision to drop out.
--Josh Marshall
Sometimes message is just really hard to formulate in real time. This AP story is running juxtaposed with news of Whittington's heart attack on many news sites ...
The White House has decided that the best way to deal with Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting accident is to joke about it.President Bush's spokesman quipped Tuesday that the burnt orange school colors of the University of Texas championship football team that was visiting the White House shouldn't be confused for hunter's safety wear.
"The orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president may be there," joked White House press secretary Scott McClellan, following the lead of late-night television comedians. "That's why I'm wearing it."
The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, took a similar jab after slapping an orange sticker on his chest from the Florida Farm Bureau that read, "No Farmers, No Food."
You can read the rest of the piece here.
--Josh Marshall
I'm not sure there'd be anything wrong with this if it's true. But this snippet from the latest piece on Harry Whittington struck me as curious ...
White House physicians who attended to Whittington at the scene after Cheney accidentally shot him were involved in the treatment, the officials said.
In context, the 'treatment' referred to seems to be the cardiac catheterization performed after the heart attack. So there's still a team of White House physicians treating Whittington.
Late Update: Not long after I ran this post the text of the graf above was changed to: "Banko said cardiologists at the hospital were consulting with White House doctors because the doctors had first treated Whittington after Cheney accidentally shot him on a Texas ranch."
--Josh Marshall
You've probably already heard this. But Harry Whittington, the guy Dick Cheney shot in the hunting accident on Saturday, has had what the hospital is referring to as a 'minor heart attack'. Apparently one of the pellets from the shotgun blast migrated into the area of his heart and caused the cardiac event.
The details remain sketchy. But it's hard to have much confidence at this point that any of the information we're gettng (or have gotten) is complete, timely or accurate.
--Josh Marshall
Like the headline to Paul Begala's post over at TPMCafe says, Dick Cheney sure is lucky that most of the reporters covering this story aren't reporters.
Here's a passage from a piece out from ABCNews ...
After difficulty getting information from Cheney's staff, ABC News learned from sources mostly outside the White House that the vice president's Secret Service contingent had notified the local sheriff an hour after the vice president accidentally shot prominent Texas lawyer Harry Whittington with a pellet gun while hunting for quail.
A pellet gun? Like when bad guys whack people with a sawed-off pellet gun? Please. A shotgun is not a 'pellet gun'. It's a shotgun.
--Josh Marshall
As long as we're on the subject, where's Vice President Cheney? Is he appearing in public any time soon?
--Josh Marshall
Details, from AP ...
Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said that about an hour after Cheney shot Whittington, the head of the Secret Service's local office called the Kenedy County sheriff to report the accident. "They made arrangements at the sheriff's request to have deputies come out and interview the vice president the following morning at 8 a.m. and that indeed did happen," Zahren said.At least one deputy showed up at the ranch's front gate later in the evening and asked to speak to Cheney but was turned away by the Secret Service, Zahren said. There was some miscommunication that arrangements had already been made to interview the vice president, he said.
Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy sheriff for Kenedy County, said the report had not been completed Monday and that it was being handled as a hunting accident, although he would not comment about what that meant they were investigating.
He said his department's investigation had found that alcohol was not a factor in the shooting, but he would not elaborate about how that had been determined. The Texas Parks and Wildlife hunting accident report also said neither Cheney nor Whittington appeared to be under the influence of intoxicants or drugs.
All sounds pretty transparent, information flowing freely.
Terrible how some miscommunication led to that sheriff's deputy come to interview Cheney being turned away.
--Josh Marshall
Knight Ridder: White House says Whittington at fault, hunting experts disagree.
--Josh Marshall
Small world.
We noted earlier that little more than an hour after the Cheney shooting incident, Karl Rove was on the phone with Katharine Armstrong, the ranch owner who witnessed the incident and was designated as the person who would speak to the press. Turns out her dad helped Rove set up his first business.
This from a 2003 article in The New Yorker ...
Rove left the Bush pre-Presidential operation to work in the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Clements, an oilman who in 1978 became Texas’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Rove was appointed Clements’s chief of staff. In 1981, he left to set up a direct-mail business in Austin called Karl Rove + Company. This put him in a position to make more money than you can as a politician’s full-time employee, and allowed him to work for many Republican candidates at the same time. Rove had the imprimatur of Texas’s Republican aristocracy from the beginning, through his connection to the Bush family and to Clements. An early financier of Karl Rove + Company was Tobin Armstrong, the owner of a Texas ranch (it was on land leased from Armstrong Rove and Bill Frist were planning to go hunting) and the husband of Anne Armstrong, a former Republican Cabinet officer. Becoming chairman of the College Republicans provided Rove with an introduction to such people, which may be one reason that winning mattered so much to him; it also seems that Rove, the self-made man, gets pleasure as well as practical advantage from his association with the Texas upper crust, people who give off the glow of ease, charm, and connection which he detected in George W. Bush the first time they met.
I guess they go way back.
--Josh Marshall
It just gets better and better. Karl Rove had a chat with Katharine Armstrong, the Bush pioneer and estate owner, who was on the hunt and is the only eyewitness who has been allowed to talk to the press. Apparently within 90 minutes of the shooting.
And it was her idea to go to the press, right?
--Josh Marshall
This is from a late piece in the Houston Chronicle (emphasis added)...
Dr. David Blanchard, director of emergency services, said Whittington had more than 10 shotgun pellets embedded in his face, neck and torso as a result of Saturday's accidental shooting. He said the pellets would not be removed, but added it is normal to closely observe a patient with multiple gunshot wounds.
Before proceeding, let's stop and award Dr. Blanchard a special award for understatement of the week.
In any case, yesterday I asked hunters to chime in on what they made of the story. Now I'd like to hear from doctors.
From a layman's point of view, I'd figure you'd want to remove these pellets if you could do so without too much difficulty. (Depending on the metal, there might be some risk of blood poisoning. Who knows?) We're hearing that these were basically just superficial wounds. But if they're making no attempt to remove them, I'd figure that means they're imbedded pretty deep. Or perhaps, if they're in the neck, they may be close to major arteries or something.
In any case, the floor is open to the doctors. Can we infer anything from the fact that the doctors treating Harry Whittington aren't trying to remove the shot from his body?
Late Update: The Austin American-Statesman says Whittington was hit by as many as 200 pellets. Some were removed; others weren't.
--Josh Marshall
I was out of touch with the press follies for much of the day today because I had to make my way -- delayed a day -- back to New York City. But on this Cheney stuff, just for the moment let's set aside all the questions about how the veep managed to shoot Harry Whittington.
Let's put ourselves back on the scene of the shootout some time Saturday afternoon. The accident happens. All is chaos for a while. Whittington is medivaced off to the local hospital.
Now, it's early Saturday evening. Presumably the veep isn't in a great mood. Who's going to bring up the question of letting the press know? "Mr. Vice President, we have to ..."
Well, you get the idea. Did no one want to pop the question? Did they just figure maybe they could brazen it out? (That one gets my vote.) What do you think?
--Josh Marshall
I'm no hunter. And I'm not from Texas. But Paul Begala's both. And here's what he has to say about Cheney's shotgun goof.
--Josh Marshall
One other point about the Cheney shotgun goof.
There's been some questioning about why the White House waited a day to notify the press about what happened. Apparently, they never did. They left it to the property owner, Katharine Armstrong, to announce it to the public.
The WaPo account says ...
It was Armstrong's decision to alert the news media. Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account.Cheney's office referred other reporters to Armstrong for a witness account, but after speaking to some members of the media yesterday afternoon, Armstrong stopped returning phone calls.
The Times, meanwhile, was able to press the point a bit more fully.
Asked why the vice president's office had made no announcement about the accident, Ms. McBride said, "We deferred to the Armstrongs regarding what had taken place at their ranch."
The vice president shoots someone seriously enough to require ICU treatment in the hospital and the White House doesn't see fit to make a public announcement? It's left to the owner of the ranch to let people know?
Clearly, it's not really left up to her. It's a passive decision. They don't want to touch it presumably. So they leave it to Armstrong to be the public face of it.
Still, very weird. But, soup to nuts, par for the course.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, in response to my question below, I've gotten a slew of emails from hunters, many of them from Texas and longtime hunters of doves or quail. So let me try to summarize what they've said. Because, while the emphases are different, they all come back to the same basic points.
(ed.note: You hunters already know this information. So I'm going to try to take what I've heard and learned and summarize it in laymen's terms as best as I can.)
First, needless to say, hunting accidents happen. This may be particularly the case with quail hunting since the prey can rise into the air suddenly and unexpectedly and you're hunting in groups. So you have a lot of variables in play.
That said, one point that comes through really clearly from everyone is that when you're hunting and you hit a person -- that's your fault. Period. End of story. Outside of extreme cases of negligence or self-destructive behavior on the part of the victim, it's not his fault. You're responsible, as the shooter, for knowing no person is in your line of fire before you pull the trigger. So this stuff about Whittington being at fault for the accident just doesn't wash for any of the hunters we've heard from.
The other point that comes through in the emails we've received is that most of our emailers seem to have a pretty clear idea what happened here, based on the description provided in the AP article. Some find the facts as described improbable; but most seem to have a general sense what happened.
Again, I'll try to explain what's been described to me using laymen's terms.
You're out hunting for quail with a small group of people. For basic safety purposes you keep a clear mental picture of where your fellow hunters are at every moment. Based on that mental picture of where people are, you create a safe fire area, a range in front of you covering some number of degrees where you know no one else is.
Things can get chaotic and excited when a bunch of birds (I'll just try, as a blanket matter, not to use the jargon) come into range or rise up. But if you don't shoot outside that safe fire zone, then everyone should be safe.
Now, if you read the description provided by Katharine Armstrong, the Bush-Cheney fundraiser on whose 'ranch' this happened, what she seems to describe is this: The birds 'flush'. Cheney picks out a bird and starts following it. In the process he basically wheels around doing a 180. So he's spun around and is now firing backwards relative to the direction he had been facing. And Whittington was just, for whatever reason, where Cheney didn't expect him to be.
Now, this happens. One TPM Reader actually describes watching the same thing happen to his father-in-law. But when it happens it's a matter or carelessness and/or recklessness on the part of the shooter and it involves ignores some of the most basic rules of gun safety.
So, from the information available, Cheney screwed up -- a relatively common hunting accident, based (as most accidents are) by not following basic safety guidelines and being careless. Trying to blame it on the guy who got shot just doesn't wash.
Late Update: On the other hand, Mary Matalin told the WaPo: "The vice president was concerned. He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."
--Josh Marshall
Okay, so maybe these injuries were a bit more serious than the vice president's office has let on.
Katharine Armstrong, the fundraiser-eyewitness, told the AP that the gunfire "broke the skin. It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
But more than a day later the victim, Harry Whittington, is still in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Corpus Christi.
That notwithstanding, the guy who runs the hospital says you can barely even tell the guy is injured. From the latest AP update ...
"He is stable and doing well. It was almost like he was spending time with me in my living room," said hospital administrator Peter Banko, who visited Whittington.Banko said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warrants it, but he didn't elaborate.
Now, there's only so much you can infer from a guy being in an ICU. But being there for more than a day I think means you were seriously injured, doesn't it?
--Josh Marshall
I'm a reasonably experienced fisherman. But my experience with hunting and guns came to an end with a rather unfortunate and painful incident with a pellet gun in the Sierra 
Nevada mountains almost twenty-five years ago. So it's hard for me to judge what happened with Veep Cheney's shotgun goof.
The only account we have is from Bush-Cheney fundraiser Katharine Armstrong, who owns the ranch where the incident took place. I'm going to reprint what she said happened. And I'd like to hear from hunters whether they think the story adds up ...
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
...
Armstrong, owner of the Armstrong Ranch where the accident occurred, said Whittington was bleeding and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said of the shotgun pellets. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
...
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
Now, just to be clear where we're going here. I don't think any bad act took place here or anything nefarious. What I suspect is that this was some pretty big screw up by the vice-president -- not the first by any means nor the most serious, but as far as I know the first with a shotgun. And the White House is passing it off as the result of reckless behavior on the part of the guy who got shot. In addition, they're putting out word that getting hit by a spray of shotgun fire isn't a big deal.
At a minimum it seems a tad ungentlemanly to put out word through your media operation that the guy you just shot was at fault for getting shot.
So, if you're familiar with this stuff, let me know. Does it add up?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader MN points out that Dick Cheney now joins Aaron Burr as one of the two vice presidents to shoot someone while in office. Are we leaving anyone out? VP Mifflin? Did John Nance Garner take anyone out during his two terms?
--Josh Marshall
I don't know whether there's anything more to say about the fact that Vice President Cheney sprayed a fellow hunter with shotgun shot than that it is a decent analog to the recent management of the country.
What stuck out to me though is that the owner of the property on which the incident occurred was the person interviewed by the AP. And the property owner, Katharine Armstrong, gave a highly exculpatory recounting of what transpired. Basically, she said the victim, Harry Whittington, snuck up on Cheney, didn't give the appropriate warning. And in any case getting sprayed with shot in the face and half your body isn't that big a deal anyway.
But by way of Brad Blog we find that Armstrong is the daughter of the one of the folks who hired Cheney at Halliburton.
And of course it took more than 24 hours for the incident to be reported to the press.
--Josh Marshall
