Richard Stevenson and David Johnston write in the New York Times that Republicans are bracing for indictments and are getting their excuses...ready.… On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program “Meet the Press,” compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, “where they couldn’t find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn’t a crime.”
The chief talking point seems to be that “bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case,” write the NY Times reporters.
Hmm, let’s think. What was it the righties kept saying about the Clinton witchhunt investigations and impeachment? That it wasn’t about sex, it was about lying under oath? I do believe I remember that.
Oh, but Clinton was a Democrat lying under oath. That’s different. Sorry, I forgot...Snarking aside, this flip flop on the severity of perjury is so hypocritical that even Michelle Malkin was bothered by it. Malkin links to a statement made by Senator Hutchison in 1999 on the Clinton articles of impeachment in which the Senator declared that lying to a Grand Jury and other acts of justice obstruction are extremely serious matters. And you’ll remember that righties everywhere took this lesson to heart–obstruction of justice is real bad. And now the GOP is saying that it isn’t that big a deal. No wonder they are confused.
Side note: This ties into something I've been thinking about for a couple of days, in rare moments of sympathy for Democrats. No wonder they're having some trouble winning us liberals over. They're facing an electorate made up of people who have now had five years of training in healthy skepticism, not just in general, but specifically about them and their motives.
We don't forget the people who just stood by and let the right do this to our country...and that includes Al Gore.
On the other hand Republicans, those lucky dogs, have spent five years (and more) training their base to be credulous, gullible fools. Now I ask you...which vote would you rather go after? Yeah, me too.
But I digress. Now, back to Mahablog:
And, of course, we lefties don’t forget that Clinton attempted to cover up a personal sexual relationship that didn’t make any difference to how he was running the country. The Bushies (allegedly) are trying to cover up a breach of national security.
And reporters keep insisting on writing stories about Fitzgerald that queer the new Republican Talking Point image of him foaming at the mouth.
in WaPo, Peter Slevin and Carol D. Leonnig write that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is known for being tough and bipartisan. “…in a case with huge political stakes for the White House,” they write, “a portrait is emerging of a special counsel with no discernible political bent who prepared the ground with painstaking sleuthing and cold-eyed lawyering.”Known for convicting Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and for compiling the first criminal indictment against Osama bin Laden, Fitzgerald is an Irish doorman’s son who attended a Jesuit high school, then Amherst College — where he was a Phi Beta Kappa mathematics and economics major — and Harvard.
He registered to vote in New York as an independent. When he discovered that Independent was a political party, he re-registered with no affiliation. Illinois citizens know him for pursuing Republicans and Democrats with equal fervor. Former governor George Ryan (R) is on trial on corruption charges, and a growing number of aides to Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) face influence-peddling charges.
My god. Am I mistaken, or is this guy really, as he appears to be, the one thing against which the walls of Washington DC cannot stand: An honest man. It's positively Capraesque, for God's sake.
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