Mary Lou Egan is quoted today in the Strib asking the best question I have heard on Vice President Cheney's shooting of a lawyer in Texas: what if the other guy had shot Cheney? This is exactly the right question. The answer is, I think, that if the other guy had shot Cheney, everybody official in the business would have stopped being a buddy and started being concerned with law enforcement. They would have asked a lot of miserable questions. Were there any causes for antagonism between Cheney and the victim, or between Cheney and any member of the party? What was everybody's blood chemistry like at the time of the shooting? What exactly does the 24 hour delay in notification mean about the motivation of the hunting party? (Imagine that Cheney had been shot in Texas and that law enforcement folks had been notified 24 hours later.)
I have this fantasy about a call to the police in North Minneapolis: "Hello. Officer, I had a party last night and one of my guests shot his wife. She's doing ok. He didn't mean to do it. He was shooting at rats and she got in the way. I guess she should have yelled out 'I am not a rat' before she came into the kitchen. Anyway, he's pretty broken up about it. We cleaned up the kitchen real good though, and you can question any of us. We have been going over the details together so we are real sure what happened."
This whole matter is not fundamentally about Cheney. It is about law enforcement. Note to the world: if somebody shoots me, in any situation whatever, I would like it if the police would assume it's some sort of crime until thay have evidence that it's an accident. Sure, everybody knows that accidents happen when people hunt; that's one reason I don't hunt. It's also the reason that, if I was planning to eliminate my old buddy Joe so I could comfort his wife in Acupulco, I would invite him deer hunting and suggest he wear his old brown coat.
I think it is very very very likely that all that went on in Texas was a miserable, embarrassing accident, totally explainable and totally forgiveable, and that any serious investigation of it as a possible crime would put all concerned through a lot of needless pain. But if police refrain from investigating possible crimes because the investigation will make people uncomfortable, they might as well give up on investigating anything. And, police ask lots and lots of questions when the suspects are poor and powerless. People who are poor and powerless have noticed that, and they have also noticed how Texas police respected the various borders of the Armstrong ranch.
By the way, why does everybody keep mentioning the Aaron Burr analogy; Chappaquidick is much closer.
Posted by shea0017 at February 17, 2006 10:01 AM