Cheney, This is Important

I can see this incident occurring in a West Wing episode. Leo conversing with Josh and Toby about how the VP just shot someone, “Look the President has been informed and he’s on board. We’ll wait until after the Sunday talk shows to release the information. No word to CJ.”
This incident is modus operandi for this Administration. Bad things happen, don’t say anything until you have to or until it’s most convenient. In a New York Daily News article former Republican presidential press secretaries criticize the slow release of the event to the public. In the same article Senator Hillary Clinton says:

"A tendency of this administration from the top all the way to the bottom is to withhold information, to resist legitimate requests for information, to refuse to be forthcoming," Clinton (D-N.Y.) said. "Putting it all together going back years now, there is a pattern that should be troubling," she said, apparently referring to the CIA leak case, Cheney's secret meetings with energy execs and White House refusal to release documents relating to judicial nominees.

And there was drinking before the shooting. There should be no drinking anytime before using a firearm. This is not acceptable and the old man’s on heart medication. Link.
Bob Herbert a columnist for the New York Times writes that,

It's time for Dick Cheney to step down -- for the sake of the country and for the sake of the Bush administration. The shooting and Mr. Cheney's highhanded behavior in its immediate aftermath fit perfectly with the stereotype of him as a powerful but dangerous figure who is viewed by many as a dark force within the administration. He doesn't even give lip service to the idea of transparency in his public or private life.

How can we stand by and let this happen?
To be honest, quite easily. I am siding with some conservatives with this issue. This whole thing smells a little too political to me. Tony Blankley, one of the commentators on my favorite NPR show ( Left, Right and Center begins his column at the Washington Times with the following:

In the absence of any pressing news these days — other than Iran's nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, on-going worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore's near sedition while speaking in Saudi Arabia, the turning over of our East Coast ports to be managed by a United Arab Emirates firm, the criminal leaking of vital NSA secrets to the New York Times, Mexican military incursions across our southern border, the Iraqi crisis, Congress's refusal to deal with the developing financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare, inter alia — the White House press corps has exploded in righteous fury over the question of the vice president's little shooting party last weekend.

He continues to attack the White House press corps as being “self-absorbed” and “self-important” with this “inconsequential matter.”