Ninny Nostrilitis

Just a quickie here, since I don't want to bump Jim's excellent posts...check out the testimony of the WRITER of the covert agent law, Victoria Toensing, testifying that Valerie Plame was NOT covert, and Henry Waxman having a cow in response.

JASmius adds: Sorry for jumping in again, Jen, but this is too good not to analyze in detail.

WAXMAN: I am stunned, Ms. Toensing, that you would come here with absolute conclusions that she was not a covert agent; the White House did not leak it; no one seemed to know in advance that she was a CIA agent. Do you know those facts for your own firsthand knowledge?

Translation: Who the hell do you think you are coming here and spoiling this mendacious propaganda exercise by telling the truth?!? This is MY hearing, !#$%^&* it, and *I* tell YOU what the truth is, and the truth is Valerie Wilson was a covert agent. Now shut up and give me the answers I want when I ask for them, you impudent bitch!

TOENSING: Well, lets just take those one by one. As I said, I was there. I was the chief drafter for chairman -

WAXMAN: I'm not asking for your credentials. I'm asking how you reached those conclusions. Do you -

*&^% it, stop telling the !#$%ing truth! Stick to the $^#*ing script!!!

TOENSING: That's part of my credentials is because I know what the intent of the act was.

WAXMAN: I'm not asking what the intent of the act was.

Because citing the intent of the act doesn't give me what I want, which is Dick Cheney's head on a platter while you belly-dance in front of it.

TOENSING: Well that’s the question.

WAXMAN: Do you know that she was not a covert agent?

TOENSING: She is not a covert agent under the act.

WAXMAN: Okay, so -

The law is an ass, and you're making a law out of me by citing the ass - or something like that - and I want it to stop! I WANT IT TO STOP RIGHT NOW!

Taking a breather from my Waxman impersonation for a moment (even I can't hold my not non-cavernous nostrils that wide open for THIS long), I have to say this Waxman-Toensing exchange is funnier than the old crank siren my folks' neighbor got out one day when I was a kid and had traffic pulling over to the side of Miller Street for a mile in each direction. Waxman is utterly apoplectic that Toensing keeps citing the law - the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 that she co-authored - that clearly indicates Valerie Wilson was NOT a covert agent. Even Patrick Fitzgerald recognized that, or he'd have pursued a lot juicier prosecution avenues than Scooter Libby.

But Donk-conducted witchhunts on Capitol Hill aren't about the law, they're about political street theater, only with viler graffiti. And Toensing keeps pissing in Waxman's punchbowl.

Now his whining descends into outright temper tantrum:

TOENSING: You can call anybody anything you want to in the halls of the CIA.

WAXMAN: General Hayden! General Hayden, head of the CIA, told me personally that she was. If I said that she was a covert agent, it wouldn't be an incorrect statement?

TOENSING: Does he want to swear that she was a covert agent under the act?

WAXMAN: I'm trying to say as carefully as I can. He reviewed my statement, and my statement was that she was a covert agent.

TOENSING: Well, he didn't say it was under the act.

WAXMAN: Okay, so you're trying to define it exactly under the act.

TOENSING: That's important.

WAXMAN: No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not giving you - I'm not yielding my time to you.

He actually screeched the word "no" half a dozen times. I thought my immature-even-for-a-twelve-year-old son was the only one who did things like that.

Here's what it boiled down to:

TOENSING: The law says Valerie Wilson was not a covert agent.

WAXMAN: YES SHE WAS! YES SHE WAS! GENERAL HAYDEN SAID SO! AND IF YOU DON'T SAY SHE WAS, I'LL HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I TURN BLUE AND MY NOSTRILS CLOSE UP!!!!

My God in heaven, how did these pathetic, puerile, brain-dead, perfidious assholes get back into power? Mass collective brain flatulence? Demonic convergence? Karl Rove lost a bet? How???