A little late night Cheney.

Several interesting items tonight, beyond, of course, the fact that Cheney still has not issued a public written statement of any kind.

FIRST, there has been another story scrubbing. This MSNBC story originally had the line

(Armstrong) ... that preceded the incident. "There may be a beer or two in there," she said, "but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.". ...

It's not in the current version anymore, but as of right now, it's there in the Google abstract.(Tip to Firedoglake) Now, why would a quote just disappear. Did she not actually say it? Did NBC just make it up to make their story good? Obviously, no. Even if she was wrong, she did say it. And that's news.

Then, there is the photo and video done by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times(C'mon let them milk it, they'll never have a story this big in that little town.) which demonstrates what a similar shotgun blast does to a man shaped target over the alleged thirty yards of Cheney's shot.

I take a issue with the results as it assumes a direct shot right at the chest, and that was not the most likely scenario. However, if you look at the spead pattern, I think that Cheney's shot must've come from much closer than the 30 yards we've been told.

Next, Slate has a great article where they went and talked to Whittington's friends. (Look, Ethel, sombody's actually doing some reporting.)

The official story is that the blast from the vice president's shotgun hit Whittington at a distance of 30 yards. Hunters at the Vaughn Building [the headquarters of Harry Whittington] are skeptical. The hunt took place on a cold, windy afternoon. Whittington and his fellow hunters were probably wearing warm clothing—say, a jacket and a flannel shirt. Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun, a smaller-diameter firearm with pellets smaller than BBs. Whittington's friends question whether the pellets could have penetrated his layers of clothing and skin at that range. Yet two pellets lodged against his larynx, another was in his liver, and another migrated into the heart muscle, causing the heart attack. The pattern of wounds was between the lower chest and the forehead, a pretty tight zone for shot of 30 yards. If the range was considerably less than 30 yards, then it is likely that Whittington's injuries were worse than the initial statement by Katharine Armstrong indicated. (The blast "knocked him silly," but "he was fine.")

On Olberman tonight, he mentioned that the first place they took Whittington was a Kingsville medical facility. For those of you not familiar with the area, Kingsville is a tiny little town where people like Ms. Armstrong could easily manage to keep something like this quiet.

Also, the story line, as I understand it, is that Whittington was shot around 5:30, there was big excitement, they went to Kingsville and then followed the ambulance to Corpus, checked on Whittington, then were back at the ranch EATING DINNER around 9 PM. They must have really cared about the guy to be back at the ranch eating dinner when there was a pellet lodged in his liver.

Tell me again how they delayed telling the press because Cheney was worried about the guy.....

This stinks. There is a huge story here if somebody can dig it out.