CHENEY'S SHOOTING MISHAP

WISCONSIN LINK FOUND

In an incident not reported until nearly a day later, Vice President Dick Cheney wounds a fellow quail hunter at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. -- News Item


"We go out when the dew is still on the grass, and then we hunt until we shoot our limit." -- Tobin Armstrong in 2000, discussing his hunting exploits with Dick Cheney.

The late Armstrong, upon whose 50,000 acre ranch Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter Saturday, went on to discuss an idyllic outing with Cheney:

"Then we pick a fine spot and have a wild game picnic lunch."

Last Saturday's shooting outing at the ranch left Austin attorney Harry Whittington, 78, peppered with birdshot from the Vice President's gun. He remains hospitalized as of this writing.
Armstrong's widow, Anne Legendre Armstrong, (Vassar '49) was the first woman ambassador to England, appointed by Gerald Ford in 1977. She was on the board of Halliburton, Inc. at the time that company hired Cheney, and is also the best friend and political mentor to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Is that scary enough for you? If not --
Daughter Katharine Armstrong, a witness who reported the incident to her local newspaper almost a day after it happened, is a lobbyist registered with the U. S. House of Representatives. Among her clients is Baker Botts, the Houston law firm that employs James Baker III, who ran five consecutive presidential campaigns for Reagan, Bush and Bush, and served as Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury.
In a sense, you could say that Baker is the individual who won the 2000 election when he served as the head of the team that represented George W. Bush, the Supreme Court's winning candidate. Still not scary enough? Read on --
Katharine Armstrong also lobbies for King Ranch, one of the few Texas properties that is larger and richer than her own family's Armstrong Ranch, which is just down the road a piece. King Ranch is 825,000 acres, or 1,200 square miles, or a little bit larger than the state of Rhode Island. Tobin Armstrong's older brother married into the King family, so you could say her work for the King Ranch is also family related.
Katharine Armstrong also lobbies congress on behalf of Prionics, a Swiss firm that has a patent on a method of diagnosing mad cow disease, and claims as her only other client a firm called Trajen Systems, Inc. a Texas firm founded in 1992 to provide aviation support to the U.S. military. Scary!
Trajen announced plans last week to take over management Crites Field, the Waukesha county airport, so there's a Milwaukeeworld connection for you.

--Michael Horne