Poor Harry Reid. First he gets smacked around   (Instapundit, Mystery Pollster, Volokh ) for using mythical numbers for rhetorical excess in saying that only 9% of the American people like Dick Cheney.

But what’s worse than having 91% of the people hate you?  Having David Broder doubt you:

Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. … The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

Today’s Broder column is the the OUCH! heard ’round the political world.

UPDATE: A point of clarification.  I missrepresented Volokh as among the smackers.  Here’s Volokh’s point:

I realize that some laypeople might miss the jocular hyperbole, but I suspect it will be very few. And Reid was apparently speaking to reporters, and in that context even someone who realizes he may be quoted might be pitching his off-the-cuff comments at the sophistication level of the audience that is present.

Harry Reid saying this about Dick Cheney…

“I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating.”

… leads the always fact-checking Mystery Pollster at Pollster.com to say this:

(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)

We still don’t know if Jim Webb is as good at shooting lawyers as Dick Cheney, but Dana Milbank’s piece today does shed light on one question arising from his aide getting popped for carrying Webb’s firearm:

Webb even hinted that he ignores the District law requiring handguns to be registered. Asked if he considered himself above D.C. law, he said: “I’m not going to comment in any level in terms of how I provide for my own security,” he said.

Joe Biden’s running for president.  Dick Cheney isn’t.   And Independence Day weekend has them both angling for photo ops.
Poor Joe Biden’s campaign has to settle for making news at the Bedford Village Inn in New Hampshire.  Nice place, but not the sort of fabulous high-profile settings the VP has enjoyed in recent days.

AP’s list:

• Catching the Pepsi 400 NASCAR race in Daytona, where he got “loud cheers” and a “standing ovation from the drivers and their crews and his excited staff took pictures with Dale Earnhardt Jr.”
• Visiting the Kennedy Space Center
• Throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener.
• -Touring a Harley-Davidson factory in Kansas City
• -Visiting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange

So the question is — which of the below two places is a more glamourous setting for launching a national campaign?

Ken Rudin has done it again. The NPR political editor’s latest “Political Junkie” column recalls that Anne Armstrong, matriarch of the Armstrong Ranch — where Vice President Cheney had his hunting accident — was mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Gerald Ford in 1976. Rudin notes that a Gallup Poll question at the time asked, “Which of the following men would you like to see as Ford’s running mate,” and the list included Armstrong.

Extreme Mortman’s historian-on-retainer Richard Andrews remembers this 1956 incident involving Spain’s King Juan Carlos. His younger brother, the Infante Alfonso, died of a gunshot wound in Estroil Portugal, with Juan Carlos as the only witness. The official explanation is that it was an accident which occurred while cleaning a gun. Alfonso suffered from hemophilia and did not survive.

Here’s a fun little theme developing from Bush Administration spokesfolks:

In today’s Howard Kurtz story on why VP Cheney chose Fox News’ Brit Hume for his interview, Mary Matalin Matalin said Cheney considered holding a news conference, but that “would have meant a lot of grandstanding” by reporters. “Everyone asks the same questions so they can get on their networks,” she said.

And here’s what White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan previously told NBC News’ David Gregory when questioned about the story: “David, hold on… the cameras aren’t on right now. You can do this later.'’

Looks like the White House is, as one astute on-camera observer/celebrity notes, attacking the messenger. Good for them! The White House is, after all, correct in doing so. Big time.

And my favorite part of the Cheney interview on Fox? His two-times use of the word accuracy:

“I still think that the accuracy was enormously important”

” …as the media outlets have proliferated, speed has become sort of a driving force, lots of time at the expense of accuracy.”

How ironic, in context.

So the big-feet media are all upset over being scooped by a tiny local paper on the story about Dick Cheney shooting a guy (Wash Post editorial: “local reporter” .. White House reporter: “tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper, and not the White House press corps at large…”). So if the big media are so good, why haven’t they found out what happened to the clay duck that got away?