The Least Dangerous Game

When you think about it, shooting a 78-year-old lawyer who isn't expecting it pretty much is the human equivalent of a canned quail hunt. (For those who missed that angle, Cheney's preferred hunting style involves having somebody else raise large numbers of game birds so they lose their fear of man, then releasing them en masse to blast away. Very much like the proverbial fish-in-a-barrel, and most serious hunters despise such 'canned hunts'. For those who missed the other angle, Whittington (the guy he shot) has had a 'minor heart attack' caused by birdshot pellets in the heart.)

I'm not terribly familiar with hunting etiquette, but I'm having trouble seeing this as anything short of criminal negligence. Certainly Whittington was partly to blame - he wasn't where he was supposed to be, and didn't tell Cheney he was stepping out of line. But there's no way around the fact that Cheney pulled the trigger without a good idea of what his gun was pointing at. Maybe that sort of snap shooting is OK if you're hunting something dangerous that might kill you if you don't get in the first shot... or you're trying to feed your family, and not shooting might mean they don't eat. But when you've got hundreds of tame quail being released for your convenience, it ought to be a little easier to make sure.

On an unrelated note, Pharyngula just alerted me to the existence of a keyword-searchable Calvin and Hobbes database.

At least *somebody* has a sense of humour

Via cerebrate, this story:

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

That actually makes a strange sort of sense.