Reply #76: A ready, fire, aim mentality

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A ready, fire, aim mentality

Column by Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON - I told you people Dick Cheney was dangerous.

Let's all wish a full and speedy recovery for Harry Whittington, the man Cheney accidentally shot on Saturday while they were out on in the Texas boonies hunting quail. As for the trigger-happy vice president, let's hope he takes this unfortunate episode as a hint to pack up his shotgun and go home. Lord knows he's done enough.

The man is out of control.

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His uncompromising drill-and-guzzle position on energy makes a lot of oil industry executives sound like tree-huggers. When the subject turns to measures that could actually begin to lead this country toward energy independence, such as conservation and alternative fuels, Cheney begins checking his watch and barely tries to stifle his yawns. But let someone raise the prospect of drilling in the Arctic, which couldn't even begin to slake America's energy thirst, and he lights up with such glee that it's impossible not to think of Mr. Burns on "The Simpsons."

Conservation sounds like one of those sissified foreign ideas. Drilling, now that's what America is all about - at least the America that spends its weekends on a 50,000-acre ranch in south Texas with a bunch of fellow millionaires, shooting at quail.

Typically, Cheney's office didn't bother to tell anyone for more than 18 hours that the vice president of the United States had shot someone. A vice-presidential shooting doesn't happen every day, and I, for one, would appreciate being informed whenever the man who's just "a heartbeat away from the presidency" peppers a 78-year-old attorney with birdshot.

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http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060214/EDIT/602140319/1003