The AP shreds several of Vice President Cheney's claims regarding his hunting accident in their latest piece.

 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."

I am so glad that President George W. Bush is so conservative and such a good financial steward.  Oh wait.

It seems that the Bush administration can't manage on an $8 trillion credit card limit and need to have it upped yet again. 

Apparently, the Bush administration is spending like a bunch of drunken hunters sailors. 

Check out this piece by Jay Rosen, a NYU Journalism professor, about the view of Bush White House on the role of the press.

It's a long piece, but worth getting through. 

Via Romenesko. 

A GOP front group that helped pushed for passage of the fatally flawed Medicare prescription drug benefit was funded, at least in part, by felon-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, likely at the request of Rep. Tom DeLay.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi recently called for a congressional investigation into the passage of the Medicare law based on the role played by yet another group with strong ties to DeLay and Abramoff, the Alexander Strategy Group.

In her call for an investigation, Pelosi laid out the troubled history of this legislation:

I hate to be a nitpicker, but if ever there was a man who deserved to have his words picked apart, it's Vice President Dick Cheney.

I have previously discussed what I view as the most significant falsehoods of his statement on Fox, but here are a couple of other observations:

Yesterday, during his interview with Fox News, the Vice President repeatedly called Katherine Armstrong an eyewitness to the shooting.  In fact, he said that was the reason he relied on her to make the incident public. 

But Ms. Armstrong's own statements make clear that she was not en eyewitness at all.  Which in turn begs the question, what does the Vice President have to hide?

Here's the first example of Vice President Cheney calling her an eyewitness:

The latest photos out of Abu Ghraib to be released are deeply disturbing.

Via Raw Story. 

Here's a must read item on the inconsistencies in the statements of Ms. Armstrong with regard to Vice President Cheney's shooting of Mr. Whittington in the face.

From the Left Coaster:

But the piece-de-resistance? Something that Emptywheel caught from the same scrubbed MSNBC story:

Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press.

So how do you get 200 pellets into the face and torso of a man with a .28-guage shotgun at 30 yards?

Well, according to this video of an avid skeet shooter who works for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, you AIM at him. 

This experienced trap and skeet shooter got 200 pellets into the face and torso of a stationary target at 30 yards, but he did so by taking careful aim, not by missing a quail and shooting a human target instead.

Hmmmmmmm 

President Bush is keeping the money raised by a second Pioneer who has been indicted.  Tom Noe, a prolific fundraiser for Bush, was recently indicted on 53 counts.  Noe has also been a major source of embarassment for Republican Governor Bob Taft, of Ohio.

From the Toledo Blade:

Democratic National Committee officials said yesterday's indictment of Tom Noe is a prime example of the corruption plaguing Washington and Columbus.