How To Drive E.J. Dionne Nuts

The noted hack columnist for the Washington Post not only isn't letting go of his temper tantrum about "fizzled Fitzmas," he's inventing new grievances to throw atop his pile of coal, and new gifts he's not just wishing for, but demanding:

Has anyone noticed that the coverup worked?

Just look at that opening line. Fitzgerald went out of his way to underline that there was no "coverup" because there was no underlying crime. But that's not good enough for Dionne, who will not be denied the vindication of his Bushophobic fantasies, no matter how wacko they get. So he accuses Scooter Libby and Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush of conspiring to "stall" Fitzgerald's probe past the 2004 election, which only further exposes the true reason behind the left demanding an investigation of this phantom incident in the first place. And all to make "Americans...think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson." Even though no such "leak campaign" ever existed other than in the fevered imaginations of people like Wilson and E.J. Dionne.

Makes you wonder why Dionne isn't blistering Pat Fitzgerald for "missing" this "obvious" White House "coverup." Perhaps because it would make hacks like Dionne, who spent the past few months building "Fitzy" into the second coming of Elliot Ness, look even more cretinous?

But not to fear. Dionne has new marching orders for elected Democrats, particularly in the Senate: hold the Samuel Alito Supreme Court nomination hostage until the President "confesses"! (and then filibuster Alito anyway):

Senate Democrats - and one hopes they might be joined by some brave [eyeroll] Republicans - should insist that before Alito's nomination is voted on, Bush and Cheney have some work to do....Bush needs to tell the public - yes, the old phrase still applies - what he knew about the operation to discredit Wilson and when he knew it. And he shouldn't hide behind those "legalisms" that Republicans were so eager to condemn in the Clinton years.

To Jed Babbin, this would be its own "Fitzmas" present:

Let us pray that the Senate Dems follow Dionne's advice to the letter and try to hold Judge Alito's confirmation hostage to a White House confessional hosted by Joe Wilson. For them to do so would not merely be political suicide, it would be to do to themselves what the Romans finally did to Carthage.

Go for it, boys and girls. Please.

Indeed. That would be the PR equivalent of the Donks climbing into catapults and launching themselves straight into a brick wall. It's difficult (though not impossible) to see even the most rabid Senate Dem going that far off the cliff. They know that no president would ever give in to such blatant blackmail, indeed wouldn't dare for the integrity of the Executive Branch and the separation of powers alone. And we know how zealous a guardian of such things this president is. Besides, the Democrats wouldn't have the numbers to have a hope of making it stick in any case.

But if Dirty Harry & friends were to grant Dionne his wish, the New York Sun has come up with the perfect White House response: pardon Scooter Libby:

This prosecution, in any event, is an assault on the presidency. If Mrs. Wilson didn't want her identity out, she shouldn't have gotten her husband a secret mission and then allowed him to wage a public campaign against the President's foreign policy. The leading prevaricator in this case is Mr. Wilson himself. He has accused Mr. Bush of falsely leading America to war. Mr. Bush had claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Mr. Wilson drank tea in Niger for a week and said that Mr. Bush's claim was not true. But even after Mr. Wilson's objection, the July 2004 report by the British government's Butler Commission found that Mr. Bush's comment was "well-founded." In a July 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Roberts, Hatch, and Bond said of Mr. Wilson, "The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."

The way out of this for Mr. Bush is contained, also, in the Constitution, in Article II, which states the president "shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."...the right move would be for Mr. Bush to shut down this entire prosecution with a blanket pardon. He would not only be protecting his loyal staffer, he'd be protecting the office of the presidency itself from those who all along in this case have wanted to undercut the president's powers in a time of war.

Dionne fears this very possibility:

But there is a catch. If Libby, through nods and winks, knows that at the end of Bush's term, the President will issue an unconditional pardon, he will have no interest in helping Fitzgerald, and every interest in shutting up. If Bush truly wants the public to know all the facts in the leak case, as he has claimed in the past, he will announce now that he will not pardon Libby.

If Bush truly wanted to put an end to the extended partisan assault on his presidency that Dionne fondly contemplates, he wouldn't wait until the end of his term, or Democrat linkage to the Alito SCOTUS nomination - he'd pardon Libby now, just as Senate Republicans crushed any attempt to filibuster Judge Alito.

And then we could sit back with a tub of popcorn and a frosty beverage and watch E. J. Dionne's head explode.

Heck, we should look for it anyway. With columns like this that read like auditions for New York Times Select, a media Scanners reprise can't be all that far away.

UPDATE: Speaking of presidential pardons, I wonder how many libs are aware of what James Pinkerton unearthed yesterday:

On Thursday night, ABC News' Ted Koppel spoke of the "expectation" that Rove would be indicted, and the following day The New Republic's Jason Zengerle described special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's failure to bring in an indictment of Rove as a "letdown." But reacting quickly to the news, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York flailed at Libby, declaring the alleged actions of Vice President Dick Cheney's now-former chief of staff to be "reprehensible."

Clinton must be careful, however, because Libby's past legal career is closely intertwined with her husband's presidency. During the 1980s and 1990s, Libby was a lawyer for Marc Rich.

And if you don't remember Marc Rich, you will be reminded of him soon enough. He's the American financier who skipped out of the United States in 1983, one step ahead of a $48-million tax bill and a 51-count indictment for various skullduggeries, including trading with Iran amidst the American hostage crisis. As Rich's lawyer over the next two decades, Libby collected, by his own estimate, some $2 million in fees.

Wait, there's more. In January 2001, outgoing President Bill Clinton gave Rich a pardon. Interestingly, Rich's ex-wife, Denise, donated more than a million dollars to Democratic causes around then, including $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign and $450,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Libby denied having anything to do with the pardon effort, but admitted he had called Rich on January 22, 2001 - which is to say, after he started working for Cheney - to congratulate him on his getting off. And Libby's powerful presence inside the White House - his title was assistant to George W. Bush as well chief of staff to Cheney - might help explain why the incoming Bush Administration failed to pursue obvious threads of corruption trailing out of President Clinton's pardon of Rich and other dubious figures.

There's an old saying about letting sleeping dogs lie. Methinks the Dems, if they can muster the forebearance, would be wise to remember that saying, lest they take still another rake in the face - and the groin as well.