A failure to shoot straight

Editorial: A failure to shoot straight
Web Posted: 02/15/2006 12:00 AM CST
San Antonio Express-News
Not since the infamous duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in 1804 has a vice president of the United States so famously discharged a firearm.
The irony is that news of Burr's shot in Weehawken two centuries ago reached the presses faster than Vice President Dick Cheney's shot in Kenedy County during the information age.
What news did emerge — 18 hours after Cheney felled an Austin attorney — didn't come from official sources. It came from ranch owner Katharine Armstrong, who called a reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
Cheney's errant shot while quail hunting was, while an accident, at least understandable.
The Bush administration's failure to shoot straight with the public and the media about the incident is neither accidental nor understandable.
It is, however, typical of a White House that has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to act as though it were unaccountable.