Now THIS is absolute power

I wonder what on earth Cheney has on this guy.

Meanwhile, DavidNYC at Kos notes:

In Texas, over the last decade, only one hunter in 26,000 has been involved in a hunting accident.

In 2005, only one in 36,000 was involved in a hunting accident.

In fact, there were 1.1 million hunting licenses issued in Texas last year but only 30 reported accidents.

Pretty remarkable that Dick Cheney is in such select company. To read some of these sorry stories - of which Dick Cheney's is now one - click here (PDF). And if you do, you'll learn something even more amazing.

In 2005, only ONE hunting accident in the entire state of Texas involved alcohol. One accident, one million licenses. Yep, that makes Dick Cheney - who drank the day he shot Harry Whittington - one in a million. And just why are alcohol-related hunting accidents so rare? Conservative Tucker Carlson explains:

I think Cheney gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, which is why he got to have a beer at lunch on a hunt. I've been on dozens of hunts, there's no beer served as lunch. You can't drink a beer if you shoot, period. Doesn't matter if you're shooting five hours after, you're not allowed to do it. This is the only time I've ever heard of it, and I think he gets to do it because he's the Vice President. So no, I don't think his doctor's going to tell him to not have a beer. (Emphasis added.)

Or, as the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department puts it simply in the report I linked above:

Alcohol and hunting don't mix.

Dick Cheney managed to have a one-in-a-million accident because he refused to play by the rules. I am not surprised in the least: This shooting accident is simply a metaphor for how Cheney and the entire administration have always operated.

And THAT is what's important. It's not so much that Cheney is the kind of guy who gets his kicks out of shooting fish in a barrel (which is essentially what this kind of bird hunting is) and deluding himself that he's a sportsman. It's that he thinks his position gives him the power to get away with anything he wants to do, whether it's combining alcohol with the cocktail of medications he takes for his various physical ailments (including heart disease and gout) and then shooting his companion followed by stonewalling the authorities; or deciding that he can classify or declassify any information he wants, or convening a secret energy commission consisting entirely of his energy industry cronies; or being instrumental in granting no-bid defense contracts to a company in which he still has a financial interest.

(Hat tip to Talking Points Memo for the photo)