The White House press briefing today was some of the best comedy I’ve seen in a long while, with the best question coming from some female journalist who inquired as to whether the V.P. was considering resignation after the hunting accident this past weekend. A close runner up was the question, repeated more than a few times, of when exactly did the president know that Cheney was (and I quote) “the shooter”.

Well, let me set the record straight. There wasn’t a covey of Quayles, er, I mean quails. The place was thick with illegal immigrants. While Cheney was drawing down on them with a 28 gauge shotgun loaded with deadly number 7 ½ shot, their ACLU lawyer jumped out of brush with some sort of legal papers. Cheney froze, as the lawyer stood with the sun at his back and the eerie sound of the theme from the good, the bad and the ugly entrancing the entire hunting party. Just then, a shot rang out from the nearby grassy knoll and the lawyer went down.

Later, on the way back to the ranch, they came across John Kerry, bedecked in the most manly of hunting attire. He claimed to have bagged a trophy Quayle, I mean quail, but everyone but the Washington press corps checked the total bird body count and concluded that Kerry missed.

The president was wise enough to not comment on the ensuing fray because, once again, the CIA got it wrong about the presence and location of Quayles, I mean quails, that led to the hunting trip in the first place. Had it not been for the NSA wiretapping of the local game warden, the whole incident would never been exposed to the light of day. As I post this dispatch, Hillary is working herself into a righteous indignation while Bill is eyeing the cleaning lady while quietly singing to himself “… I ain’t nothin’ but a bird dog… “.

There, you now know what really happened.

Radar