A hunting tale peppered with discrepancies By Calvin Woodward, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn’t immediately disclose his hunting accident because he wanted the confusing details to come out right. Instead, authorized accounts came out slowly – and often still wrong.

The result: a week of shifting blame, belatedly acknowledged beer consumption (not “zero” drinking after all) and evolving discrepancies in how the shooting happened, its aftermath and the way it was told to the nation.

“There’s a reason they call this crisis management,” said corporate damage-control specialist Eric Dezenhall, “and that’s because it’s a mess.” …

Although there is no evidence that beer impaired Cheney’s judgment, initial denials that he had consumed alcohol were wrong.

“No one was drinking,” Armstrong said at the outset. “No, zero, zippo.” She said the hunters washed down lunch with Dr Pepper. Later, she qualified her comments and said beer might have been in the cooler but she did not think anyone drank any. …

Cheney acknowledged Wednesday, “I had a beer at lunch” several hours before the group’s afternoon hunt, asserting “nobody was under the influence.” …

“If I recall,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said of Armstrong, “she pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington, when it came to notifying the others that he was there.”

The about-face came Wednesday when Cheney made his first public comment on the accident.

“It was not Harry’s fault,” he said. “You can’t blame anybody else. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.”

I’m a very ‘lucky’ guy, says man hit by veep BY KENNETH R. BAZINET, DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Browbeaten by late-night comedians and an aggressive press corps, Cheney acknowledged he’d endured “a very long week.” Even loyal Republicans said the GOP has been hurt by Cheney’s stonewalling tactics and stubborn resistance to answer questions.

Potential GOP presidential candidate and Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel took a whack at Cheney’s five draft deferments that kept him from serving in Vietnam.

“If he’d been in the military, he would have learned gun safety,” the Nebraska senator told the Omaha World-Herald.

The whole time I read Cal Thomas’ indictment of Al Gore for treason, I kept thinking about this series of pictures, including Bush kissing the Saudi prince and holding his hand.

Calcified Cal seems to forget that, not only is Saudi Arabia an official ally in the War Without End, but that the royal family is joined at the hips with our own King George. mjh

Cal Thomas Al Gore’s diminished capacity

Last Sunday, Gore spoke to the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia. He trashed his country on the soil of one of the most repressive regimes on earth — a monarchy that incubated 15 of the 19 hijackers who killed 3,000 of his fellow citizens on Sept. 11, 2001, and is the home country of Osama bin Laden. …

That Gore has “lost it” is evident from his personal attacks on the president, whom he has called “the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon” and a man who “has brought deep dishonor to our country.” Gore has called the president a “moral coward” and referred to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse as “the Bush Gulag.” He has accused the administration of an alliance with “digital brownshirts,” called the administration “simultaneously dishonest and incompetent,” and said the president is “out of touch with reality.” [mjh: Note that Gore may not have said any of these things during his “treasonous” speech in Saudi Arabia, but Cal Thomas is happy to leave you with that impression.]

Even allowing for excesses of political rhetoric, such comments are way over extreme. …

For Gore to make his anti-American remarks in Saudi Arabia is at least as bad as what Nazi sympathizers said in this country and abroad leading up to and during World War II. One definition of “treason” is: Violation of allegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.

By any objective standard, Al Gore’s remarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition.

Clever Trever belittles the issue of the Vice-President, Dead-eye Dick, shooting a man in the face as merely grist for a petulant press corps.

Meanwhile, our own gun-smoking President makes this observation:

“This is a man who likes the outdoors, and he likes to hunt. And he heard a bird flushed, and he turned and pulled the trigger and saw his friend get wounded,” Bush said.

“Saw his friend get wounded”? True but so is “shot his friend in the face.” mjh

Most reprints of the first story below titled it “Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say.” When the Albuquerque Journal published the following story, they titled it “A Trend Against Dissent?” and cut it in half, eliminating 15 paragraphs, including more specific examples of this trend. One wonders if they didn’t diminish the impact of the story in the process. mjh

Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say By Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers

It’s a crime, punishable by up to six months in prison, to “disrupt” an event guarded by the Secret Service, which includes presidential rallies. (A proposed extension of the Patriot Act now being negotiated in Congress would broaden such prohibitions to other vaguely defined national events.)

Does a T-shirt “disrupt” an event? To the political operatives who ejected people on the basis of their shirts – or ordered them arrested – a shirt can be disruptive. …

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that it wasn’t illegal to wear an obscene anti-Vietnam war jacket in a California courthouse, despite a state law prohibiting such messages because they might incite violence.

“The state may not, consistently with the First and 14th amendments, make the simple public display of this four-letter expletive a criminal offense,” the court said. …

This trend has a chilling effect on those who disagree with people in power, analysts say.

“The long-term consequence is a higher degree of self-censorship,” O’Neil said. “Society is the poorer when deprived of the marketplace of ideas.”

TRIBUNE COLUMN By TONY MESSENGER

[T]his isn’t a column about the war. It’s not about the president. It’s not about party politics.

This is a column about free speech.

It’s a column about dissent.

It’s a column about the right in America to wear a damn T-shirt. …

During [Gov. Matt] Blunt’s State of the State speech last month in Jefferson City [, Missouri], Capitol police got into the censorship routine on their own. Tim Shaw was one of 11 people forced to either turn their shirts inside out or leave the House gallery.

Shaw is a member of Show Me ADAPT, a disability-rights organization that has been highly critical of Blunt’s Medicaid cuts, particularly those that negatively affected folks with disabilities. …

At Blunt’s speech, Shaw and 10 other members of the group were told they couldn’t watch the governor’s address while wearing their shirts. The reason? Capitol Police Chief Todd Hurt said the shirts were considered lobbying. …

Does either party really want to create a country where no dissent is allowed? A country where all forms of free speech that get in the way of political spin are somehow seen as subversive?

The thought scares Shaw, and he chooses his words carefully.

“It is reminiscent of regimes of power in world history that are not representative of our Constitution,” Shaw says.

President George W. Bush used the word “freedom” 17 times in his speech the other night. He used it more than any other word, and yet I wonder about its place atop the president’s lexicon.

ABQjournal: Bush Visit Lights Up Rio Rancho By Joshua Akers, Journal Staff Writer

The Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety reported one arrest during the event.

DPS spokesman John Francis said Robert Chavez, 56, of Albuquerque, was arrested after failing to obey a police officer.

Francis said Chavez was told to stay on the sidewalk three times. When Chavez stepped around a DPS officer and into the street, he was arrested around 9 a.m.

DPS did not have a crowd count for protesters or supporters outside the event.

I put a protest tarp up on my roof just a few hours before Duhbya got to town. I decided on the classic “BUllSHit,” which I coined for Poppy Bush so many years ago — like father, like son. On the deep blue tarp, I made the “BU” and the “SH” white and the “ll” and the “it” red. Very patriotic, like dissent.

Just my luck that the next 24 hours were the windiest of the year. No amount of bricks will hold a tarp flat on a New Mexican roof in a good stiff wind. But, though it wrinkled a bit, at least it didn’t fly.

Did Duhbya see it? Well, there is no question that a few years ago, his plane flew straight over my house, over my DUMP BUSH and No W tarps. Don’t know about this time.

Reading the anemic coverage about local protests and a blog entry about protests in Nashville, I decided to dust off my own story of protest just over 2 years ago — when I got within 6 feet of the presidential limosine.

Continue reading Speak Up! →

[updated 2/4/06]

The great T-shirt threat

The first

casualty of this effort to make the Capitol safe for the president to expound about totalitarianism elsewhere was Cindy Sheehan, the

California mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq as part of what Bush would describe as “the call of history to deliver the

oppressed.” Sheehan had the temerity to peel off her coat to reveal a T-shirt that said, “2,245 Dead. How many more?”

Sheehan was

hauled away in handcuffs and charged with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor. Soon after, sharp-eyed police spotted Beverly Young, wife of a

Florida congressman — sitting near first lady Laura Bush with a T-shirt that said, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”

Young was quickly ejected from the gallery. Despite an angry exchange with police — she called an officer “an idiot” for classifying

her T-shirt as “a protest” — she was not arrested. With the gallery cleared of “trouble,” Bush delivered his speech, with a tiny flag

pin on his lapel and the usual giant American flag backdrop.

“Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country

safer — so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause,” said Bush, to robust applause.

Police Apologize to Sheehan, Drop Charge

By LAURIE KELLMAN, The Associated Press

Capitol Police dropped a charge of unlawful conduct against anti-war activist Cindy

Sheehan on Wednesday and apologized for ejecting her and a congressman’s wife from President Bush’s State of the Union address for

wearing T-shirts with war messages.

Cindy Sheehan Released After Arrest for Wearing Shirt By David Swanson

HERE IS CINDY’S OWN REPORT:

As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight.

I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.

There have been lies from

the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: …

I was never told that I couldn’t wear

that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those

things…I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately, and roughly (I have the

bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for “unlawful conduct.” …

I wore the shirt to make a statement.

The press knew I was going to be there and I thought every once in awhile they would show me and I would have the shirt on. I did not

wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George’s speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear

shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable that I would be arrested…maybe I would have, but I didn’t.

[via guerillawomentn.blogspot.com via Coco]