Wheaties & Crow

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist must have been eating his Wheaties lately, because he was on a roll on CBS' Face The Nation yesterday.

Not only did Fristy "maintain contact" with retreating Democrats and RINOs by squashing even the notion of token legislation to increase congressional oversight of the compromised NSA terrorist surveillance program, but he blasted host Bob Schieffer back on the Cheney hunting accident will-o-the-wisp so effectively he had Schieffer all but going "humina-humina-humina":

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer on Sunday that Democrats were playing "partisan politics" with Dick Cheney's hunting accident last weekend - a charge that left Mr. Schieffer fuming.

"What America does not want to see is what happened right afterwards, and that is that the Democratic leadership tried to inject partisan politics into what is a very, very tragic accident," First told Schieffer, who bristled at the remarks.

"But Senator," the veteran newsman protested, "ah - I mean - didn't - didn't - shouldn't [the hunting accident] have been made public but for no other reason than the administration and the vice president's own good? I mean, one can understand that he clearly was not thinking straight. Who would, after thinking they'd killed their best friend?"

Schieffer continued to insist that Democrat attacks on Cheney were legitimate, then asked: "Has the vice president become a liability to the White House? Has he become a liability to your party?"

Frist countered: "Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He is a bold leader. He understands and works very closely with the vision of the President of the United States in securing America's future for a safer, stronger country. That means he has to be both a leader as well as a participant and I think he does it very, very well."

I suppose one can understand Schieffer's confusion. Like most Extreme Media mavens, he's just not used to GOP guests standing their ground and even firing back instead of meekly taking the abuse or kissing ass (e.g. Chuck Hagel's brownnosing swipe at the veep last week). Fristy was supposed to get the deer-in-the-headlights look and mumble something about being "concerned" about Schieffer's empty, ridiculous contentions, maybe take the hint and distance himself from the White House, not blow the press' doors off defending Cheney instead. It just goes to show how needless the GOP's congenital timidity really is.

Want proof? Look who took a bit of a hint of his own:

NBC White House correspondent David Gregory ate a little crow Sunday on Meet he Press," apologizing for his arrogant behavior during White House press briefings dealing with the shooting of a hunting companion by Vice President Cheney.

Reacting to the storm of criticism leveled by the public at the Washington press corps for complaining that they were not told immediately about the incident, leaving the job of reporting it to a small-town Texas newspaper, Gregory apologized for his boorish behavior.

"I think I made a mistake,” he told host Tim Russert. "I think it was inappropriate for me to lose my cool with the press secretary representing the vice president. I don’t think it was professional of me. I was frustrated, I said what I said, but I think that you should never speak that way, as my wife reminded me, number one. And number two, I think it created a diversion from some of the serious questions in the story, so I regret that. I was wrong, and I apologize.”

Not that Gregory repented of the "sin" that fueled his meltdown, the stupendous arrogance and puerile entitlement mentality of the White House press corps, which he put over as a "proxy for the American people" to whom the Vice President was obligated to bow & curtsy. Big Time's refusal to do so, and Scott McClellan's reinforcement of it, are what generated the "diverson from the serious questions in the story" in the first place. That Gregory still thinks there was anything serious about the hysteria into which he and his colleagues flew pretty much guarantees that we can expect more such eruptions of childish pique as the unraveling of the American Left continues apace.

Sorry I have to cut this short, but my wife asked me to pick up some on-special milk on the way home. Maybe I'll get some Wheaties while I'm at it. If they could inject a spine into a hapless doofus, who knows what other health benefits lurk inside that orange box?