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Late Nite FDL: Smorgasbord

We have so many stories to chose from tonight it's hard to pick one, so let's not:

1. Glenn Greenwald -- I know Redd I both touched on it earlier today, but Glenn brought InstaHack and the cult-o-Bush blogosphere to their fucking knees with this post at Crooks and Liars. InstaHack did Church Lady Brady one better in the WAAAAAHHH!! department and though virtually every major wingnut blogger vociferously objected to Glenn's challenge that they are not, in fact, true conservatives but rather authoritarian cultists, they also had to denounce Ann Coulter in the process. That includes K-Lo (above) who gave off hectoring about abstinence in order to do so (and yes, you all know the obligatory TBogg truism that goes along with that one). Now that is a fucking coup.

2. Crooks and Liars has the screen grab of the MSNBC story about alcohol being around when Cheney shot the old man in the face. Nice catch.

3. MoDo, behind the firewall, talks about the classy Veep:

Private citizens have been enlisted to blame the victim. Maybe poor Mr. Whittington put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he was, after all, behind Vice, not in front of him. And the hunter pulling the trigger is supposed to make sure he has a clear shot. Wouldn't it be, well, classy for Shooter to express just a bit of contrition and humility?

Instead, the usual sliming has begun, with the Cheney camp trying to protect the vice president by casting a veteran hunter as Elmer Dud.

(snip)

Admit no mistakes. Express sympathy. Blame the victim without leaving fingerprints by outsourcing the smear to the private sector.

4. Gregg Mitchell over at E&P:

Bush is now trapped. If he'd admitted that no one woke him up to tell him, and that’s why McClellan didn’t know until Sunday morning, that would have painted a very troubling (though not fresh) picture of a disengaged #1 man who is actually, at best, #2. But at least it would suggest that Bush took action and ordered the story out when he did find out about it.

Yet in declaring that he did know about Cheney’s role at 8 p.m. Saturday—and did absolutely nothing to tell anyone about it—an even more disturbing, and perhaps sinister, picture of the true arrogance of power may emerge.

Wait until more evidence seeps out. Here's a fresh tidbit: Late Tuesday, the Secret Service related that the shooting actually took place at 5:50 p.m. Saturday, 20 minutes later than previously stated--and therefore, right up against sunset.

5. Wolcott:

Rich guys pretending to be Jeremiah Johnson is one of the many fascimile editions of rawhide authenticity being successfully peddled in the media with no one willing to stop and say that inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering on animals should be a source of sin and shame, and that the decent thing to do would be to break Cheney's shotgun in two before anyone or anything else is harmed by his buffoonery.

Wishing you and yours a happy Valentines Day and more action than K-Lo. As our first day with over 80,000 visitors it was good for us.

Update: Reader Dan makes this observation:

How can an armed man (Whittington) advance on the VP without intervention by the Secret Service? If he separated from the party did the Secret Service lose sight of him? You know, the other guy with a *gun*. The secret service team's primary purpose is to protect the VP and they probably categorize other hunters as a far greater threat than Al Qaeda terrorists popping out of the grass. My point is that the Secret Service must have seen everything.

That is a very good point.

Update: I forgot about this -- bet you didn't know Sherrod Brown was African-American either, did you? Neither did he.

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 2/14/2006 10:55:00 PM