Texas Style Tort Reform

Frustrated by lack of progress on tort reform in the Senate, Vice President Dick Cheney decided to take matters into his own hands. On a quail hunting trip at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, the Vice President turned his shotgun on 78-year-old Texas lawyer Harry Whittington. Official word from the White House is that Cheney wounded his long time friend and fellow hunter in the face, neck and chest, apparently because he didn't see Whittington approaching as he fired on a covey of quail. Apparently?

Some US newspapers took potshots at Cheney over the weekend hunting accident. Time Magazine opened a profile of Whittington with the tongue-in-cheek observation that "Accidentally shooting a lawyer is never a good idea, especially one who's known for being something of a pistol himself."

Note that in 1999, then Governor Bush appointed Whittington to the Texas Funeral Service Commission. Cheney, meanwhile, was heard muttering to himself: “So many lawyers, so little time.”

I started this post intending to do a Scrappleface treatment of the incident:

Filled with remorse over the incident, the vice president immediately repealed the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. “I’m truly sorry that I winged Harry when he blocked my shot at the quail,” said Mr. Cheney. “I now realize that gun violence is not just an inner-city poor problem, but rather an epidemic that can spill out of the ghetto and affect wealthy and powerful, elderly Americans.”

But I’m no Scott Ott. And after listening to the clueless press corps grill White House spokesman Scott McClellan, there is no way I can write anything as silly as what the press morons were saying. One after another they kept referring to Cheney as “the shooter.” Check it out.