she doubtless wanted to help shape the story
what part was shaped, I wonder?
In a message dated 2/19/2006 5:57:53 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, Jeffrey writes:
What I`ve heard is that it was 14 hours before Cheney was made available to the local authorities. Have not read that, heard that from another local news nut
Jeffrey,
When you say "made available," isn't this an implication that the local authorities were prevented from talking to the Vice President?
I have gone to the web site of the local Corpus Christi newspaper and looked around. There was no report there claiming that the local authorities were denied permission to see the Vice President. The newspaper did report that the local sheriff's deputies only bothered to go out on the next day. Check this bit from The Smoking Gun out:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0216061cheney1.html
Now, I am trying to be objective. Just because I think that most of the "Mainstream Press" is a bunch of biased, incompetent, left-wing hacks posing as real journalists does not exonerate the Vice President automatically. [Both Clinton and Nixon were hounded by relentless hostile "conspiracies"-- but they were also both guilty!] But let's examine the innuendoes being leveled by Mr. Cheney's critics.
The whole thing about notifying the major press organs is egotistical crap. They have no right to get the story first.
The central innuendo seems to be that there was some sort of cover up by the Vice President's staff, the Secret Service, and the White House because Mr. Cheney was allegedly inebriated. O.K., where is the evidence of this? Aren't there other possible explanations-- even ones unflattering to the Vice-President? Why is this explanation in particular offered? Is someone anonymously accusing the Vice President of getting roaring drunk before going out hunting?
Does the Vice President have a history of drinking to excess while hunting? The Vice President always struck me as, if you will pardon the expression, quite sober. But since I don't personally know the man, my opinion is of limited value. So how well do any of the people on television repeating this innuendo know the Vice President? Have any of them gone hunting with him? (Heck, how many of them have even gone hunting-- EVER?) Can they find anyone who has hunted with the Vice President in the past who will attest to a tendency for the man to "drink and shoot?"
Let's go back eight years. I assumed that President Clinton was guilty of perjuring himself about Monica Lewinksy before transcripts of Linda Tripp's tapes were available to the public. Why did I think that? Was I being unfair? Or was this a very understandable leap of faith given Mr. Clinton's well-documented, confessed, and acknowledged record of philandering?
Given Mr. Cheney's personal reputation, why should I believe the whispers of documented liars who are obviously harboring a vendetta against him? The narrative seems out of character for the man. Now if Ted Kennedy were in a dangerous accident...
I need some hard evidence here. Or are we are to believe that everyone involved is filing false affidavits because that is what the Clinton White House would have done. Or maybe everyone is covering up because they are afraid of the Bushitler secret police.
Maybe Dan Rather can stage a comeback by finding the original affidavits and sheriff's reports courtesy of some Kenedy County Democratic alderman!
--Lysandru