Robert Novak on The Lost Scandal
Think this Libby trial wasn't political? Read Robert Novak's take:
Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: "It was said a number of times. . . . Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
I read this morning on Drudge about another of the jurors saying Bush should pardon Libby. It's not on there any more, for some reason. Anyway, doesn't that seem a little odd? To find the man guilty, yet say the President should pardon him?
Ann Coulter nails it in her latest column:
Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.
It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.
With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.
As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.
This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.
Read the whole column. She lays out how differently Republicans are treated than Democrats when it comes to criminal investigations. Sandy Berger, William Jefferson, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy...the list is endless. If you're a Democrat, apparently you can do pretty much whatever you want without fear of repercussions. This has got to change, and darned if I know how to go about it.
JASmius adds: Heck, it's been illegal to be a Republican since at least Watergate. Why else do you think most Pachyderms are afraid to be openly conservative?
Looking at the GOP landscape these days, I am becoming more and more astounded at the electoral success this party has enjoyed over the past generation. How did a party this spineless and feckless control the House for the previous twelve years, the Senate for eighteen of the previous twenty-six years, and the presidency for what will be twenty of twenty-eight years (assuming the Donks don't succeed toppling Bush and Cheney in one fell impeachment swoop)?
That's why I'm so pervasively pessimistic about the center-right's prospects, near- and long-term. I've felt for a long while that we were on borrowed time and that the only thing sustaining us was the fact that the other side had gone completely stark raving insane. Last November even that ceased to be enough to prop us up. That's the core of why it is imperative that President Bush do what he should have done four years ago and put an end to this madness by pardoning Scooter Libby post-haste.
Perhaps Rush Limbaugh is correct that the American people "hunger" for conservative leadership, though again, last November's election results don't suggest that. But if a Republican President cannot muster the partisan cajones to right a wrong that he himself is more responsible than anyone else for letting go on this long and get this far out of hand, one has to wonder whether the GOP will still be a viable electoral vehicle for the aforementioned conservative leadership should some vestige of same ever manifest itself again.
Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: "It was said a number of times. . . . Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
I read this morning on Drudge about another of the jurors saying Bush should pardon Libby. It's not on there any more, for some reason. Anyway, doesn't that seem a little odd? To find the man guilty, yet say the President should pardon him?
Ann Coulter nails it in her latest column:
Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.
It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name and Fitzgerald knew it.
With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.
As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.
This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.
Read the whole column. She lays out how differently Republicans are treated than Democrats when it comes to criminal investigations. Sandy Berger, William Jefferson, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy...the list is endless. If you're a Democrat, apparently you can do pretty much whatever you want without fear of repercussions. This has got to change, and darned if I know how to go about it.
JASmius adds: Heck, it's been illegal to be a Republican since at least Watergate. Why else do you think most Pachyderms are afraid to be openly conservative?
Looking at the GOP landscape these days, I am becoming more and more astounded at the electoral success this party has enjoyed over the past generation. How did a party this spineless and feckless control the House for the previous twelve years, the Senate for eighteen of the previous twenty-six years, and the presidency for what will be twenty of twenty-eight years (assuming the Donks don't succeed toppling Bush and Cheney in one fell impeachment swoop)?
That's why I'm so pervasively pessimistic about the center-right's prospects, near- and long-term. I've felt for a long while that we were on borrowed time and that the only thing sustaining us was the fact that the other side had gone completely stark raving insane. Last November even that ceased to be enough to prop us up. That's the core of why it is imperative that President Bush do what he should have done four years ago and put an end to this madness by pardoning Scooter Libby post-haste.
Perhaps Rush Limbaugh is correct that the American people "hunger" for conservative leadership, though again, last November's election results don't suggest that. But if a Republican President cannot muster the partisan cajones to right a wrong that he himself is more responsible than anyone else for letting go on this long and get this far out of hand, one has to wonder whether the GOP will still be a viable electoral vehicle for the aforementioned conservative leadership should some vestige of same ever manifest itself again.
posted by Jennifer at 8:32 AM
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