The Key Ingredient For The Perfect Crime

Make sure you're a "New" Democrat.

Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism. ...

The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, then later lost them.

And all in the effort to cover up the criminal negligence of the Clinton administration in leaving the country wide-open to the 9/11 (and previous) attacks.

After all the left-wing smears launched at the Bush Administration over the past couple of years, from "Yellowcake-gate" to "Plame-gate" to "Bush lied about WMD to get us into an illegal war" and so on, ad nauseum, one can only imagine the media bloodfrenzy that would have erupted had Berger been a Republican, much less a Bushie. I don't know if I have the ability to create a verbal depiction that would do it adequate justice. Just use your imagination; I doubt if an LSD trip could overstate it.

What penalty, by contrast, is Berger going to incur?

Under terms negotiated by Berger's attorneys and the Justice Department, he has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and accept a three-year suspension of his national security clearance. These terms must be accepted by a judge before they are final, but Berger's associates said yesterday he believes that closure is near on what has been an embarrassing episode during which he repeatedly misled people about what happened during two visits to the National Archives in September and October 2003. [my emphasis]

TKS's Jim Geraghty reaches an impressive level of sacrastic, head-shaking incredulity:

What? Just what do you have to do to get your clearance pulled permanently? Start the clock, he can go back and start deleting memos that make him and his colleagues look bad starting in 2008 or so!

He also poses a fusillade of rhetorical questions:

Now... what about this deafening silence that we have heard on this from Berger's associates, since this story first surfaced? Will we be seeing any criticism of him from former President Clinton, Madeline Albright, Hillary, John Kerry, or any other prominent Democrat? Is the perception that this is no big deal, standard operating procedure for that White House, and is something to be swept under the rug?

Do any Democrats want to confront the unpleasant truths of how the Clinton White House handled terrorism?

Forget Superman - the Clinton Machine really is bullet-proof. Even "the Bush/Ashcroft" Justice Department won't cross their lowliest member, when the fact is that every last one of them, including Bill & Hillary, belong behind bars.

And yet there are still people who think that Mrs. Clinton can be beaten in '08.

That's what makes me incredulous.