The best zinger of the week on Dick Cheney’s now infamous hunting accident came not from Jon Stewart or any of the late night comics but courtesy of Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel:

If he’d been in the military, he would have learned gun safety.

That wasn’t all. In an interview with thirty national security journalists on Thursday, Hagel provided a much needed dose of sanity on Iran:

I think one thing we ought to be doing is engaging the Iranians. Why aren’t we talking to them? That’s the essence of good foreign policy.

For more on Hagel, read Joe Lelyveld’s impressive profile in last week’s New York Times Magazine.

I have my doubts about how far Hagel will go in challenging the Republican establishment, but as John McCain makes nice with right-wingers, Hagel is emerging as the GOP maverick to watch.