Situation normal: Ignore real stories

Wearing five pounds of hairspray, Sean Hannity called the "Mainstream Media" (Freeper right wingnut speak for media that isn't 100 percent controlled by the Republican propaganda machine), out of touch.

For once, I agree with Hannity, which is rare. After all, we're talking about a guy who, if he was born 100 years ago, would have been part of Adolph Hitler's inner circle, along with Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

While Hannity raised his eyebrows in disbelief, he harped about the White House press corps tizzy over Dick Cheney's hunting accident and the fact the Bush administration failed to report the incident to major media outlets.

In fact, the White House press corps spent nearly all of Monday's 41-minute briefing with Porky Pig, uh, Scott McLellan, complaining about the oversight. Many of the reporters clearly expressed their outrage while preening for the cameras. Fun stuff.

I agree with Hannity. Why spend so much time harping on the Cheney shooting. Sure it's a big story. But it's not an important story.

There were important questions to ask about Cheney. But they weren't about his inept hunting skills.

The hack press corps should have been asking about the letter from Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel investigating the Plame leak case. That letter indicates that Dick Cheney basically ordered his now-indicted chief of staff to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's identity to the press. And now that it's becoming quite clear that Plame was indeed a clandestine CIA operative, working against nuclear proliferation in Iran, a country which was and continues to be a greater threat to our security than Iraq ever was. (In my experience rawstory.com rarely gets a story wrong. And they often break stories like this about a day or two before they hit the major media.)

So, while the White House press corps whines and preens over the Cheney hunting incident and who knew what when about some crony Republican donor lawyer getting pepperred in the face with a whimpy 28-gauge shotgun, a real controversy was brewing about the Veep... that he had weakened national security, politicized a CIA asset, and put political payback ahead the country's efforts to defeat terrorism. If ever there were a time a vice president deserved impeachment, here it is. Too bad the Republican party puts partisanship before good government, justice and truth.

So Sean Hannity, I agree with for perhaps for the first time. However, it's too bad you ignored the Cheney leak story, too. But I guess you're not that kind of "journalist."