Meltdown

Victory in Iraq and Karl The Great's Great Escape continue to infuriate the Democrats to a high, rolling boil. And it didn't take long for the blithering to reach the party's loftiest reaches.

Perhaps I should rephrase that as "the highest of the low."

Take Chucky Schumer (the OTHER senator from New York) for example, who petulantly refuses to take Patrick Fitzgerald's "no, I won't indict Karl Rove" for an answer:

I have asked for a report. Clearly the name was leaked, and there is a different standard between leaking a name, which is wrong, and a criminal standard, which is a statute that's been on the books since 1982. It's prosecutor Fitzgerald's decision only to prosecute if the criminal standard is met. But that doesn't absolve the White House or the leaker of culpability and there ought to be punishment for them as well, an appropriate punishment even if it's not a criminal punishment in a trial.

Wah, wah, wah. Schumer is pissed because he has nothing. And Schumer has nothing because Patrick Fitzgerald has nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. If there's any truth to the old joke that any prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if s/he wants to, then Karl Rove is virgin-innocent.

But that doesn't matter to Schumer and his ilk. The truth never has. Nor will it ever, because it is never on their side. Indeed, that's another reason Chucky is bent out of shape. As long as the possibility existed that Rove would be indicted for something, ANYthing, it didn't matter what the charge was, because libs would have taken it and summarily convicted him of all their own accusations. The indictment could have been for jaywalking on the wrong Tuesday and the Left would have seized upon that as "proof" that Rove leaked Valerie Wilson's identity, hit on her, shaved her cat, and gave her a really bad rash.

Of course, the fact that the only indictment Mr. Fitzgerald has filed is completely unrelated to the original premise of his investigation - the claimed "leak" - is powerful evidence (if there weren't already reams and reams of it) that not only did nobody in the Administration (besides her hubby "Yellowcake Joe") "leak" Val's identity, but she was not covered by the particulars of either the 1917 Espionage Act or the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Or, in plain, illiberal English, Schumer's very accusation against Rove is legally impossible.

You can't leak the name of a covert agent that is not covert. Period. End of story. An end that Mr. Fitzgerald reached barely two months into his probe, after which it took almost two additional years for him to trip up some poor bastard enough to float a process-related indictment. And don't be surprised of Scooter Libby beats that rap.

So, no longer having the law on his side on anything, Chucky nevertheless stamps his feet, insists that Rove DID TOO leak Valerie Wilson's name, and she WAS TOO covert, and if Fitzgerald isn't going to put Rove in jail, then SOMEBODY had better "punish" Rove AND the White House OR ELSE!!!

Not only that, but he demands Fitzgerald produce a final report on his investigation:

No matter what the outcome is of the final investigation, I am renewing my call on Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to issue a report detailing his findings and explaining his charging decisions. In this type of case, I think that's the prosecutor's obligation to the American people.

There's just one teensy-weensy problem with Schumer's "call" - it's illegal. Fitzgerald is not an independent counsel; he's a "special prosecutor" who still works for the Justice Department. There are no more independent counsels because the independent counsel statute was allowed to lapse years ago, largely because it had been turned on Bill Clinton in the '90s the way the Dems had used it against the Reagan and Bush41 Administrations previously. IC's could write final reports for public consumption because the statute specifically authorized it. Regular prosecutors can't because grand jury deliberations are secret by definition.

So, to sum this up, Chucky Schumer wants Karl Rove punished for not breaking the law, and he wants Patrick Fitzgerald to break the law and tell him why he won't do it for him.

Then there was "Dirty Harry" Reid (aka Senator Pencil-Neck) at the American Communist Party convention (or something like that) - taking his final lunging steps into the RETREEEEEEEEAAAAAAAT!!!!! chorus:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told a gathering of Democratic and liberal activists in Washington yesterday that "we have to start bringing our troops home."

The Nevada Democrat opened his remarks at the Take Back America 2006 Conference by criticizing the Bush Administration's handling of the war in Iraq. The conference is hosted by the Campaign for America's Future (CAF), a liberal advocacy organization.

"As we meet here today, the President is meeting with his Cabinet to talk about Iraq. As well he should," Mr. Reid said to applause.

"President Bush has stated his position repeatedly: " 'As Iraqi forces stand up, American forces will stand down.' I don't want to hear that anymore," Mr. Reid said. "Our troops deserve an exit strategy."

Except that the President wasn't meeting with his Cabinet at Camp David, he was turning up triumphantly in Baghdad to bask in the glory of the snuffing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and reiterate once again that there will be no "exit strategy," we will not cut & run, and oh by the way, the Republicans are going to win in November. He left out the part about telling Reid to go to Camp David and join the bamboozled White House press corps in a group around-the-world circle-jerk, but we can read between the lines well enough.

Of course, you knew that a towering mound of hauteur like John Finger Kerry couldn't let Senator Stack-'o-Dimes upstage him in the Donk Sedition Sweepstakes, and he came up with a 24-carat humdinger: Not only must we flee in pell-mell terror from Iraq, but we should invite the Syrians and Iranians to help themselves to the country's abandoned carcass:

[Kerry offered] a new amendment....yesterday that would require all American troops to be withdrawn by 12/31/06. This amendment, SA 4203 attached to the DoD authorization bill S2766, leaves in some weasel words about mission-critical troops being left in place while all the rest get the John Murtha "over-the-horizon troop presence" effective retreat from Iraq....

The final paragraph is nothing more than John Kerry's global test writ specific. He wants to force the President to call a summit that includes two terror-supporting nations, Iran and Syria, to determine the future of Iraq, including oil revenues. Someone may have forgotten that Iraq has sovereignty over much of the issues specified by Kerry in this amendment. Iran and Syria do not need to offer their opinions on how Iraq should manage its own oil revenues, and strictly speaking, Iraq doesn't need our advice either. Only Kerry would write this amendment to require the President to listen to the Iranian mullah[garch]y and the Syrian dictatorship on how best to implement a democratic government. It's asinine on its face, and yet Kerry apparently offered this with a straight face.

Kerry's amendment is asinine, and so is his face, come to think of it (They don't call him tree trunk-nose and sphincter-mouth for nothing). But make no mistake that he believes every word of his amendment. Iran, Syria, the Arab League, NATO, the EUnuchs, the UN, the Federation Council, the Romulan Senate, the Cardassian Union, the Tholian Assembly, the Breen Confederacy, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Talerian Republic, the Galactic Commonwealth, the Borg Collective, three terrorists, two dictators, and Sadda-a-a-am Hussein.

Still, leave it to Lurch and Dingy and the Donk Nixon to express with tiresomely windy verbosity what they could have with a single image:

The next panel in that cartoon needs no elaboration, and is scheduled for early November.