Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

Cheney shooting quail at a Texas ranch---we've got the picture in our minds: Dead-Eye Dickhead Cheney is clear, but what about that ranch? And the ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, the person who told a member of the local press about Cheney shooting somebody. How do we picture her? Annie Oakley of the 21st century? Or one of the old Dallas babes on horseback? Or maybe just a hard-working Texas businesswoman making a go of her big old ranch, seeing that the old farts from the city get a good lunch before she rides off to supervise the new fences on the north forty?

Well, not exactly. Sidney Blumethal in Salon described her and her powerful family(emphasis added):

Both the vice president and the deputy chief of staff[Karl Rove], as it happens, owed their previous, lucrative jobs in the private sector to their relationships with the Armstrong family. Anne Armstrong, Katharine's mother, was on the board of Halliburton that made Dick Cheney its chief executive officer. Tobin Armstrong, Katharine's father, had financed Karl Rove & Co., Rove's political consulting firm. Katharine herself is a lobbyist for Houston law firm Baker Botts, a major Texas power broker since it was founded in the 19th century by the family of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and close associate of George H.W. Bush's.

Katharine Armstrong took up lobbying after her recent divorce. Her contracts include Parsons, a construction firm that has done work in Iraq, among others. Her business partner, Karen Johnson, a close friend of Rove's, does extensive business with the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and defense contractors.

So Katharine Armstrong, universally described as the ranch owner, is a lobbyist. So her calling a local acquaintance to tell the story wasn't just the account of an innocent and untutored semi-witness. Especially since, Blumenthal surmises, her story was crafted with the help of Karl "Blame the Victim" Rove.

In all the subsequent hoo-haw, which apparently continues in the major media, I missed these most pertinent facts. Maybe you did, too.