Why The "Cheney Shoots Man In Face" Story Just Won't Die

I was never much of a bird hunter -- and it's been over 20 years since the last time I went pheasant hunting -- but Cheney's claim that he was nearly 30 yards away from Whittington when he shot him in the face didn't make much sense to me, and it apparently doesn't make much sense to the experts either:

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.

Cheney is finding out the hard way why it is important to (1) immediately come clean on something like this, and (2) tell the truth when you do so. Of course, I guess it is possible that Cheney got it wrong because he was drunk (as AmericaBlog asks, "What did Cheney drink and when did he drink it?"), and it certainly doesn't help that his so-called eyewitness was actually so far away from the incident that she thought Cheney was having a heart attack.