Matt Ortega

Marcy Wheeler, the preeminent Plameologist authority and author of Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy, believes that the work of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is long from over.

In the interview, she revealed that she believes that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will press forward with his investigation, and that his ultimate target is Vice President Dick Cheney: “I’m not entirely convinced that Fitzgerald’s done. I used to be conservative on that, believing that he was done. But there are little snippets of hints that he’s not.”

Wheeler continued:

… “I think Fitzgerald clearly wants Cheney and he’s not the kind of person who rests on his laurels after getting one conviction. One thing I can say is I don’t understand why Eric Edelman wasn’t called and that may be something he kept in reserve. I don’t understand why Jenny Mayfield wasn’t called, that may be something he kept in reserve.”

MSNBC’s David Schuster mentioned this point in a report he filed Monday night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on the same network.

“Legal sources confirm to MSNBC tonight that if Libby is convicted, prosecutors are expected to attempt to revisit Libby’s vague testimony about Vice President Cheney,” Shuster said. “The idea is that prosecutors would seek to flip Libby to get at suspicions about the Vice President.”

“Prosecutors are still seeking to pursue Cheney in the overall investigation,” he added. [emphasis added]

Looks like the hunter has become the hunted.

This has got to be embarrassing for Meet the Press host, Tim Russert. Apparently the White House believes that on Russert’s show, Vice President Dick Cheney can “control [the] message.”

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Option 1: “MTP-VP,” she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

“I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

(Hat tip: Huffington Post)

The whirlwind of discussion on the left after Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap is interesting to read. Jane Hamsher reminds us of Cheney’s election-year rhetoric.

That just takes the whole fun out of it. I am reminded of a hilarious Chuck Norris fact: “Chuck Norris does not hunt. Hunting infers failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.” The same is true of Bush/Cheney, apparently, and not because the two are tremendous hunters/fishermen, but because the odds are stacked so much in their favor, failure is virtually an impossibility. Sounds like GOP politics to me.

Updated on 02/12/06 at 12:20am: Apparently Cheney’s office nor the White House wanted anybody to know about the shooting.

The more than 18-hour delay in news emerging that the Vice President of the United States had shot a man, sending him to an intensive care unit with his wounds, grew even more curious late Sunday. E&P has learned that the official confirmation of the shooting came about only after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property where the shooting occurred and called Vice President Cheney’s office for confirmation.The confirmation was made but there was no indication whether the Vice President’s office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter, Jaime Powell of the Corpus Christ Caller-Times, had not received word from the ranch owner.

I kid you not:

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was “alert and doing fine” after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong. [...]

Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System. [...]

“The vice president didn’t see him,” she continued. “The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good.” [...]

She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.

“Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been,” she said. “The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came.”

Updated 02/13/08 at 4:34pm: Ed Helms and Rob Corddry in two of the most hilarious clips from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

This does not look good.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.