In his February 14 nationally syndicated column, Media Research Center (MRC) president L. Brent Bozell III wrote of Vice President Dick Cheney's February 11 hunting accident: “With apologies to the Cheney friend who received the pellet facial, the incident was funny.” According to a Google news search, Bozell's column was first posted on the MRC website at roughly 6 p.m. ET on February 14 -- well after news reports indicated that Texas lawyer Harry Whittington, who was part of Cheney's hunting party and is the man Cheney shot, was transferred to an intensive care unit after suffering a “cardiac event” brought on by birdshot lodged in his heart. Bozell further downplayed the seriousness of Whittington's injuries by using euphemisms such as “pellet-facial” and “sprinkled with birdshot.”

From Bozell's February 14 column:

Once it was clear that the man sprinkled with birdshot would survive, Vice President Cheney's hunting accident was widely expected to become a late-night comedian's bonanza, a frenzy like Wal-Mart shoppers scrambling for $29 DVD players.

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With apologies to the Cheney friend who received the pellet facial, the incident was funny. Now we learn the vice president received a warning citation from a Texas Ranger for not buying a $7 hunting stamp in advance. As a friend e-mailed me, “Where else can you shoot a lawyer in the face with a shotgun and get off with just a warning?”