Itchy trigger finger

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which issues hunting licenses, said that it will start requiring hunters, wishing to bag a lawyer, to have the new "lawyer's stamp" on their hunting license. Currently Texas hunters are required to carry stamps for hunting birds, deer, and bear, at a cost of $7 annually. The new "lawyers stamp" will cost $1.00, but open season will be all year long.
The department further stated that although the "lawyers stamp" comes at hefty price, sales have been brisk and it is believed it will generate annual revenues in excess of $1 billion dollars the first year. Other states are considering similar hunting license stamps.

"Among moderate and liberal Americans, there is such an anger toward Cheney," says Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University. "There are people who believed he pulled the trigger figuratively on a lot of things. Vice presidents can get away with hitting people with golf balls, but they can't get away with shooting people with shotguns."

Interview of the Vice President by Brit Hume, FOX News

Veteran hunters and shooting experts said Thursday that they still did not understand how the vice president injured his fellow hunting partner so badly if he was actually 30 yards away as Cheney says.

"It just doesn't add up," said John Kelly, a quail hunter from New York with more than 36 years of experience. "With a shotgun, the pellets spread out the further you get, and for that many pellets to hit such a small part of this man's body means Mr. Cheney was far closer" than the 27-meter distance cited.

Arianna Huffington cuts through all of the smoke and mirrors in... Happy Valentine's Day, Dick: Why the Press is Acting Like a Jilted Lover.

Cheney and the Bush White House have been blatantly lying to the press -- and the American people -- for over five years now. Lying about WMD, Saddam's links to 9/11, looming mushroom clouds, being greeted as liberators, the insurgency in its last throes, the war being able to pay for itself, torture, NSA wiretaps, Plamegate, and on and on and on.

But this is the story they are shouting "How could you?!" over.

It's like being involved with a serial philanderer. You find out that he had sex with your sister -- in your bed -- and you live and let live, so as to not rock the boat. Then you find out about the secret love child he had with his secretary, and you take it and hope that your kids will like their new half-sibling. Then he gambles away your life's savings and puts you in debt, and you let him slide with a promise to never do it again.

Than comes Valentine's Day... and he gives you a box of milk chocolate when he knows damn well that you love dark chocolate and can't stand milk chocolate. How dare he! All hell breaks loose: "You don't have to yell." "I will yell!" And you finally kick him and his milk chocolates out of the house.

The Humane Society calls Dick's style of "hunting" pheasant shooting... Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration.

The Marlboro Man

His family is still missing Blake Miller - the Miller who left Kentucky for Iraq a couple of years ago. The man who left was easygoing, quick to laugh, happy to sit in a relative's house and eat and smoke and talk. The man who came back is quick to anger, they say, and is quiet. He still smiles often but does not easily laugh.

And when he takes a seat in his adoptive grandmother's home, amid her collection of ceramic Christ figurines, it is in a chair that faces the door.

Mildred Childers, who owns those figurines, sees Miller's difficulties as a crisis of faith. She still remembers Miller's call just before the assault on Fallujah, and his terrible question: "How can people go to church and be a Christian and kill people in Iraq?"

"He was raised where that's one of the Ten Commandments, do not kill," she said. "I think it's hard for a soldier to go to war and have that embedded in them from small children up, and you go over there and you've got to do it to stay alive."

Recently, some of his Marine buddies have been calling Miller up, crying drunk, and remembering their war experiences. Just like Papaw Joe Lee used to do when Miller was a boy.

"There's a lot of Vietnam vets ... they don't heal until 30, 40 years down the road," Miller said. "People bottle it up, become angry, easily temperamental, and hell, before you know it, these are the people who are snapping on you."

Jessica interrupted. "You're already like that," she said.

She recalled her own first glimpse of the Marlboro Man -- an image seen through tears of relief that he was alive, and misery at how worn he looked.

...from THE WAR WITHIN by Matthew B. Stannard, SF Chronicle Staff Writer

Why we fight...

I told you so!
WhyWeFight.com

Born: October 14, 1890
Died: March 28, 1969

Dwight David Eisenhower was an inspiring military leader, best-selling author, head of Columbia University, and president of the United States. As the top American general and later Allied Supreme Commander in the European theater, he directed Allied forces in World War II to victories in North Africa and Italy and coordinated the massive and successful D-Day invasion of France. Extraordinarily popular with both his soldiers and the American public, Eisenhower was twice elected to the presidency, where he led the United States with determination and purpose during the difficult early years of the Cold War. After his retirement from public life in 1961, Eisenhower continued to serve his country as an advisor to presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
Amy Goodman plays excerpts from the film and speaks with award-winning director Eugene Jarecki.