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Dick Cheney may have accidentally shot a man in the face while he was vice president, but that didn't stop Fox News from flying to Nevada to get his advice on recently-proposed gun control laws.

Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins caught up with Cheney over the week at the Safari Club International convention for gun owners and manufacturers, where the former vice president and his daughter, Liz, participated in a discussion about gun rights and the realism of torture in the film "Zero Dark Thirty."

Cheney told Jenkins he was "worried" about President Barack Obama's efforts to increase gun safety.

"We may end up in a situation where you get a proposal or a proposition that does, in fact, threaten the rights of law-abiding Americans, and at the same time, doesn't do anything with respect to the problem everybody's concerned about, such as the shooting that happened in Connecticut," the Wyoming Republican said.

"I find especially in groups like the group here and an awful lot of my folks in Wyoming who supported me all those years in Congress are very, very concerned that there isn't adequate regard for the rights of law-abiding citizens," he added. "We understand that there's clearly an effort underway, but one of the things we've done in Wyoming -- with respect to Jackson Hole, where I live, with respect to safety of schools -- we have a deputy sheriff, armed deputy sheriff at the schools in the city. And that's probably a more effective deterrent than anything that Congress seems to be debating at the present time."

"How worried are you the President Obama's gun control plan threatens the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding American?" Jenkins asked.

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This story is just disgusting. There ought to be criminal charges against this contractor for doing this, instead of them trying to dump their liabilities onto the taxpayers: KBR, Guilty In Iraq Negligence, Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill:

Sodium dichromate is an orange-yellowish substance containing hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion chemical. To Lt. Col. James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard, who was stationed at the Qarmat Ali water treatment center in Iraq just after the 2003 U.S. invasion, it was “just different-colored sand.” In their first few months at the base, soldiers were told by KBR contractors running the facility the substance was no worse than a mild irritant.

Gentry was one of approximately 830 service members, including active-duty soldiers and members of the National Guard and reserve units from Indiana, South Carolina, West Virginia and Oregon, assigned to secure the water treatment plant, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sodium dichromate is not a mild irritant. It is an extreme carcinogen. In November 2009, at age 52, Gentry died of cancer. The VA affirmed two months later that his death was service-related.

In November, a jury found KBR, the military's largest contractor, guilty of negligence in the poisoning of a dozen soldiers, and ordered the company to pay $85 million in damages. Jurors found KBR knew both of the presence and toxicity of the chemical. Other lawsuits against KBR are pending.

KBR, however, says taxpayers should be on the hook for the verdict, as well as more than $15 million the company has spent in its failed legal defense, according to court documents and attorneys involved with the case.

KBR's contract with the U.S. to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure after the 2003 invasion includes an indemnity agreement protecting the company from legal liability, KBR claims in court filings. That agreement, KBR insists, means the federal government must pay the company's legal expenses plus the verdict won by 12 members of the Oregon National Guard who were exposed to the toxin at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant.

The military disagrees. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracting officer told KBR in November 2011 that litigation costs "are not covered by the indemnity agreement."

The public doesn’t know what the indemnity agreement actually says because the military considers it classified. Until recently, the veterans exposed to the toxin couldn’t know either, nor could attorneys at the Department of Justice, who were left battling the contract in the dark, according to a source there.

Michael Doyle, a Houston-based lawyer who helped the successful suit against KBR, told The Huffington Post the military declassified the indemnification agreement on Dec. 21 and gave it to him under a protective order that banned him from sharing the language to parties not involved in the case. John A. Elolf, a spokesman for KBR, confirmed the declassification of the agreement and said the contractor also was prevented from providing a copy. HuffPost has requested the document under the Freedom of Information Act from the Corps of Engineers. Read on...

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John wrote about whistle-blower Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse back in 2005 and sadly this woman's story has fallen completely off the radar, while in the mean time, war profiteer Dick Cheney is allowed to come on the air day after day and not be held to account for his helping his former company, Halliburton, fleece the American taxpayers.

Kudos to Maddow for shedding some more light on the story again during her and Richard Engel's two hour documentary, Day of Destruction, Decade of War.

More video on Halliburton's war profiteering and Greenhouse below the fold.

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Arianna Huffington sparred with Liz Cheney during the panel segment on This Week over whether the Bush-Cheney administration deserves part of the blame for the disaster in the Gulf with Cheney of course coming to the defense of her father and Halliburton. Rather than address Huffington's points about deregulation and the mess that the MMS had become under their watch, Cheney accused her of repeating left wing talking points and just wanting to demonize the Bush administration.

After Huffington said Halliburton was responsible for the cementing on the rig and had defrauded the U.S. government out of hundreds of millions of dollars, Cheney cut her off and said her assertions had no relationship to the truth. They both said they looked forward to PolitiFact fact checking the show.

PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter page for This Week is here. I don't think Liz Cheney is going to fare too well there once they update the site for this panel segment.

One other note on Cheney's appearance on This Week, if she's going to be allowed to filibuster the show and talk about half the time and over the other guests, why even bother to have a moderator?

HUFFINGTON: George, the truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney Administration wanted -- full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbysists filling the very agencies they're supposed to be overseeing --

WILL: So it's Bush's fault.

HUFFINGTON: -- the industry.

WILL: Just clear this up.

HUFFINGTON: It is absolutely 1000 percent Bush-Cheney's fault, plus the fact that the Obama Administration has not really done enough fast enough to change what's happening at the MMS agency, at all sorts of other agencies. Not just when it comes to the energy problems, when it comes to Wall Street, all over, we are seeing the complete success of the kind of regulatory system that Bush-Cheney wanted. And we're seeing this is the inevitable result of what they wanted.

CHENEY: You know, it's truly amazing. I mean I actually heard George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore's marriage too. I mean it's incredible the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. And frankly --

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This is coming from a woman whose father said this:

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." -- on the Iraq insurgency, June 20, 2005

and this:

"We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." --March 16, 2003

and this:

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." --March 16, 2003

and this:

"There are a lot of lessons we want to learn out of this process in terms of what works. I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise." --Sept. 10, 2005

Of course the name Halliburton or her father's energy policy that helped bring this disaster about never came up in the conversation. She has no credibility to be criticizing anyone about what's going on in the Gulf now, but that's not going to stop Fox from giving Mini-Me-Cheney a chance to lob political stink bombs at every opportunity.

Wallace: Liz, I think it's fair to say that Katrina marked a turning point in the public's view of George W. Bush. Does this have the same potential downside for President Obama?

Cheney: I think it does because I think we begin to get into the issues here of credibility and leadership where it's about, it's bigger than just this particular crisis and catastrophe. You've got a President now who thinks that saying something makes it so. You know you showed it in the last segment when he said "I'm going to have the most transparent administration in history" but that doesn't actually mean you're going to be open and transparent. It's not the same thing as we've seen with him.

On the war he says "I know we're at war" but he doesn't understand he actually has to lead us in the fight. Words themselves aren't enough. And, you know, going down to Louisiana and saying gosh, you know "I'm heartbroken, I'm angry, I'm frustrated" and then going on vacation to Chicago, really doesn't send a message that this is a man who's leading.

And at the end of the day, I disagree with Bill on this, I think actually there is more that the federal government could be doing in terms of approving the licenses for the berms that Governor Jindal has asked for, in terms of responding more quickly to the requests that are coming in from the parish presidents, not pushing this all off onto BP. And I think people sense when an administration is really in charge and really leading and when they aren't.

And so I think you know, the Obama administration has got a problem here, not having learned from the lessons of Katrina and you know, really confirming in people's minds frankly that a gift for reading a teleprompter is not the same as leadership.

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From Think Progress, something that I've been wondering myself as I've watched this disaster go on in the Gulf, why are we letting the criminals run the show with the effort to fix this thing? As I've said before, the only thing it looks like they're doing is as much damage control as possible for future law suits and trying to salvage as much oil as possible from the well as they can before someone stops them. I don't feel any differently as their latest attempt at the "top kill" maneuver failed.

The above video is Doug Brinkley's disgust with the entire situation which I know everyone from that area is feeling and here's some of what Think Progress's Wonk Room had to contribute on why BP should not be running the show on getting this gusher of oil stopped.

Yes, We Can Push Out BP:

The latest attempt by BP to shut down its apocalyptic oil gusher — the “top kill” maneuver — has failed, despite BP CEO Tony Hayward’s assurance yesterday that it had a 70 percent chance of success. There’s no question that the federal government, if the president so decides, can take over the challenge of mitigating the damage of BP’s oil to the shores and waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But can President Obama take charge of stopping the wellhead gusher from the foreign oil giant? The administration argues it’s keeping BP in charge of the attempts to shut down the blown out well because government doesn’t have the equipment or expertise to solve this engineering problem without BP.

...The administration has been keeping an ecological criminal in charge of the crime scene during a national crisis. Seventeen nations have offered assistance — but “the final decision is up to BP” to accept it, according to the State Department — and only Canada, Mexico and Norway have been allowed to help so far. The law — Title 33, Section 1321 — mandates that President Obama “shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge,” using any means necessary. There are not any resources — people or equipment — that Obama doesn’t have the authority to seize and put into service.

...In fact, the president has the authority to nationalize BP America and seize all of its assets, rendering the question of reliance on BP moot. If Obama does not believe that the Clean Water Act’s “spill of national significance” provisions give him sufficient authority, he can rightly declare a national emergency, or demand that Congress deliver him necessary legislation. Or there’s an easier option: BP is on the hook for all costs of this apocalyptic disaster. Obama can simply buy BP America and send the bill to its foreign parent company.

Go read the whole post. I don't think too many people would disagree with their points, including Doug Brinkley. BP cannot be trusted to clean up the disaster they created and the administration needs to come to grips with that. Yesterday would not be soon enough. They need to be removed from the decisions on how to fix this and criminally prosecuted for how they've handled this disaster, along with Halliburton and Transocean.

As Brinkley noted BP has constantly been in cover up mode and they've had to be called to Washington to get any information released. They should not be trusted to fix this. I hope he's wrong that the country is not paying attention to this disaster.

From Ring of Fire:

Mike Papantonio of Ring of Fire Radio discusses the history of BP and Halliburton, including their past as convicted felons. These two felons are responsible for the oil spill that is dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and we're supposed to expect them to tell us the truth about what happened? Given their histories, that seems highly unlikely.

Mike mentions the case of Jamie Leigh Jones that Halliburton left locked in a shipping container after she was raped until she agreed to sign a waiver not to sue them.

Sound familiar? We can add Transocean to Pap's list as well.

Transocean To Workers After Rig Explosion: Sign The Waiver Here, Please!:

When rescued workers were brought ashore following the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig last month, officials with drilling giant Transocean presented them with forms stating they had not been injured and that they had no first-hand knowledge of what happened. Lawyers for the workers are now crying foul about what they say is an all too common industry practice to impeach workers' credibility in future legal proceedings.

Some workers are saying they were coerced into signing the form, a charge Transocean denies. But the episode is reminiscent of reports that BP presented Alabama fishermen with contracts that included a no-sue clause in exchange for $5,000.

The rig exploded April 20, killing 11 members of the 126-person crew. When the survivors finally came ashore on a rescue boat at Port Fourchon, Louisiana -- 27 hours after the accident, according to Transocean -- they were brought to the Crowne Plaza Hotel outside the New Orleans airport. There, they were presented with this one-page form (obtained and posted by NPR), with two sections for workers to initial. Read on...

SNL whacked BP, Transocean and Halliburton for their failed attempts to stop the volcano of oil pouring into the Gulf. It would be funny if it weren't so sadly accurate.

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Despite this news, Mike Papantonio is not optomistic that BP is going to end up making good on its promises.

Attorneys General Reach Agreement on Oil Spill:

State attorneys general have secured an agreement with BP over reimbursements owed to constituents following the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The agreement came as five gulf coast state attorneys general met with the oil conglomerate.

Speaking from Jackson, Mississippi, Attorneys General Jim Hood of Mississippi, Jerry Caldwell of Louisiana, and Troy King of Alabama explained they were "cautiously optimistic" about an agreement reached with the oil company.

As Ed Schultz and Mississippi AG Jim Hood discussed in the previous segment, BP looks like they're already judge shopping in Texas.

BP wants oil spill lawsuits centralized in Houston:

BP wants more than 70 lawsuits over the Gulf oil spill consolidated before a federal judge in Houston.

The oil giant is asking the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to have U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes to hear pretrial matters for all the cases.

Potential class-action lawsuits have been filed in every Gulf Coast state. Plaintiffs include commercial fishermen, business interests, property owners and others.

Mike Papantonio pointed out just what that might mean for anyone who hopes to recover and damages from BP, Transocean or Halliburton.

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Larry King talked to Robert Kennedy Jr. who is representing the fishermen in Louisiana in a class action law suit against British Petroleum and James Carville about the incident at the Deepwater Horizon rig. Besides the problems with Halliburton and their faulty work with the cementing process and the lack of and the lack of an acoustic switch, Kennedy said they were also violating their permit by drilling too deeply. Although they were only permitted to drill down 18,000 ft., Kennedy said they now have evidence that they were drilling as deeply as 25,000 ft.

As Kennedy noted and Susie already wrote about here, it seems all they're worried about now is limiting their liability although the company is now trying to walk that back after the bad publicity.

The Democrats are introducing a bill to raise the liability cap that Kennedy also cited as a problem with their litigation. I think we're going to be lucky to ever get a penny back from BP or any of the companies involved but if BP violated their drilling permit as Kennedy claims here, it's going to make it harder for them to avoid responsibility for the disaster instead of pawning it off on the subcontractors.