Feb 13, 2006 5:26 PM

Cheney's Friendly Fire

In the first documented vice presidential shooting since Aaron Burr dropped Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel, Dick Cheney put a shotgun blast full of No. 8 birdshot into the face of a hunting companion on Saturday.

"The vice president was concerned. He felt badly, obviously," Cheney adviser Mary Matalin told the WaPo. "On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."

Except, you know, shoot a guy in the face. And then not come clean about it for, I don't know, 18 hours. And, sure, not make himself available to the local sheriff for questioning.

But other than that, it was 100% by-the-book.

As the Post reports, however, there are some advantages to hunting with a Veep with a bum ticker. "Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there," said a spokeswoman. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

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