It is an shame that the Vice President has to be bullied into doing the right thing, and then, his friends only weigh in because they are afraid he is hurting them politically.

Here's the WaPo story:

Vice President Cheney's slow and unapologetic public response to the accidental shooting of a 78-year-old Texas lawyer is turning the quail-hunting mishap into a political liability for the Bush administration and is prompting senior White House officials to press Cheney to publicly address the issue as early as today, several prominent Republicans said yesterday.

Ari Fleischer has joined the chorus of critics of Team Bush's handling of the Cheney shooting.

According to Editor & Publisher:

Ari Fleischer, who served as President George W. Bush's first press secretary, added to the growing criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney's handling of the weekend shooting incident in Texas, telling E&P this afternoon that it "crosses the threshold of news worthiness that ought to be announced and explained."

Fleischer, who was Bush's first press secretary - from 2001 to 2003 - told E&P that Cheney's accidental shooting of Texas attorney Harry Whittington on Saturday during a hunting trip should not have taken nearly a day to be reported. "It would have been better if the vice president and/or his staff had come out last Saturday night or first thing Sunday morning and announced it," he said during a phone interview Tuesday. "It could have and should have been handled differently."

I am glad that the press is making Scott McClellan's life miserable on the story of Vice President Cheney shooting his hunting partner in the face.

Almost certainly, the entire White House communications operation is lying, most probably because Cheney was drunk at the time of the shooting.  If not that, then there was some other embarassing reason why the White House has hidden information and stonewalled on this.

Clearly that's part of the reason why David Gregory of NBC keeps pressing McClellan on details, something journalists used to do frequently when they knew they were being lied to or stonewalled.  Here's a bit on their back and forth yesterday.

Since the deficit is under control, I can certainly understand why the President would want to forego $7 billion in royalties and instead give them to the struggling oil companies. 

Here's the NY Times covereage:

The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

The Bush administration's respones to Hurricane Katrina that even the GOP isn't willing to cover up for them on that one.

Here's the NY Times story on the report to be issued on Wednesday by the all-Republican committee that investigated the Bush administration's response to Katrina:

House Republicans plan to issue a blistering report on Wednesday that says the Bush administration delayed the evacuation of thousands of New Orleans residents by failing to act quickly on early reports that the levees had broken during Hurricane Katrina.

An examination of documents shines a new light on the government response to Hurricane Katrina.

A draft of the report, to be issued by an 11-member, all-Republican committee, says the Bush administration was informed on the day Hurricane Katrina hit that the levees had been breached, even though the president and other top administration officials earlier said that they had learned of the breach the next day.

That delay was significant, the report says, rejecting the defense given by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security that the time it took to recognize the breach did not significantly affect the response.

"If the levees breached and flooded a large portion of the city, then the flooded city would have to be completely evacuated," the draft report says. "Any delay in confirming the breaches would result in a delay in the post-landfall evacuation of the city." It adds that the White House itself discounted damage reports that later proved true.

But now we know that is literally true about the Bush administration.

Perhaps Cheney should brush up on his NRA gun safety tips:

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.

The Bush administration is profoundly incompetent.  What other explanation can possibly be offered for this?

Check out Senator Barbara Boxer's op ed on President Bush and Jack Abramoff.

That's why I have co-sponsored a "sense of the Senate" amendment, along with my colleagues John Kerry and Frank Lautenberg, urging the White House to provide the American people with a thorough account of the meetings the President, his staff, and senior executive branch officials had with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

It's time for President Bush to answer our questions about Jack Abramoff. Urge your Senators to support my amendment today!