The Inevitable Dick-Cheney-Goes-Hunting Post.

We all know the story, or some approximation of it, by now of what transpired when Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington last weekend. The mishap, and its resulting fallout in the media, is a good example of how the cover-up is worse than the crime (so to speak).

Until Cheney finally came forward and talked about the accident with Fox News yesterday, the miscommunication—or general lack of communication—was in some ways illustrative of Cheney's, and the rest of the Bush administration's, penchant for secrecy as they sat on the story for hours while information trickled out and the story kept changing.

The Sierra Club knows a thing or two about Dick Cheney and secrecy. Early in his first term, Cheney chaired an energy task force that met "early and often with CEOs from Big Oil, Big Coal, and other energy industries," according to the Club's Environmental Law Program. The Law Program has a handy web page detailing the Club's legal efforts to shed light on what role those corporate figures may have played. Turns out that the courts consistently ruled in the Club's favor, even as the administration appealed—but hit a snag when it came to the Supreme Court. That's where the Sierra Club knows a thing or two about Dick Cheney and bird hunting.

In December 2003, the Supreme Court agreed to review the Sierra Club's lawsuit against Cheney and the administration. In January 2004, Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia went on a duck hunting trip in Louisiana. The Club formally requested Scalia recuse himself to "redress an appearance of impropriety and to restore public confidence in the integrity of our nation's highest court." But Scalia refused to recuse, and though the Supreme Court wouldn't dismiss the case altogether—as the administration desired—it kicked the case back down to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which eventually agreed with the administration's request to dismiss.

In the end, there's one stark difference between the hunting mishap and Cheney's energy task force: We may know more about what happened to Harry Whittington on a quail hunt than how our nation's energy policy was formulated. Which one is truly the bigger story?

(By the way, the Sierra Club often makes common cause with hunters. In fact, we have a whole Web page devoted to it right here.)

Cartoon by Mark Fiore.