… and the complicit MSM.
The Republican spin machine is at it again. They have launched a coordinated, preemptive strike against Patrick Fitzgerald and any pending indictments. Basically, the strategy is: describing the prosecutor, the media, and any D’s who ‘dare’ impugn the reputation of the Cheney/Rove/Libby/WHIG cabal or express sympathy for Joe and Valerie Wilson, as bleeding-heart wimps who don’t understand how the “real world” of politics works. They excuse the leak and any attempt to hide it as simply being “aggressive politics” and that anyone who complains is just being a baby.
Unfortunately, and dare I say inevitably, they are good at this stuff. It starts to seep in, even into the SCLM. Most notable disappointments include Tim Russert, who basically gave Kay Bailey Hutchison free time on MTP this weekend to expound on the Republican talking points, and now Nicholas Kristof in today’s NYT, who opines that:
“Before dragging any Bush administration officials off to jail, we should pause and take a long, deep breath… We don’t know what evidence has been uncovered by Patrick Fitzgerald, but we should be uneasy that he is said to be mulling indictments that aren’t based on his prime mandate, investigation of possible breaches of the 1982 law prohibiting officials from revealing the names of spies. Instead, Mr. Fitzgerald is rumored to be considering mushier kinds of indictments, for perjury, obstruction of justice or revealing classified information. [NOTE: this is HOOK-LINE-AND-SINKER what the R fog machine wants us to think).
There is, of course, plenty of evidence that White House officials behaved abominably in this affair. I’m offended by the idea of a government official secretly using the news media – under the guise of a “former Hill staffer” – to attack former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. That’s sleazy and outrageous. But a crime? I’m skeptical, even though there seems to have been a coordinated White House campaign against Mr. Wilson. To me, the whisper campaign against Mr. Wilson amounts to back-stabbing politics, but not to obvious criminality. [Note: Did Sen. Hutchison write this for him? This is EXACTLY what the R strategy says].
So I find myself repulsed by the glee that some Democrats show at the possibility of Karl Rove and Mr. Libby being dragged off in handcuffs. It was wrong for prosecutors to cook up borderline and technical indictments during the Clinton administration, and it would be just as wrong today. Absent very clear evidence of law-breaking, the White House ideologues should be ousted by voters, not by prosecutors.”
Aaarrggghhh!!! Where can I start? Not only does this column make Kristof look like an (unwitting?) supporter of the Republican spin-control team, but it makes the cardinal mistake throughout (in some passages that I didn’t quote, as well as the concluding passage above) of comparing Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton and the ultimate perjury charges there–over a BLOWJOB–to this investigation of a rogue White House cabal that successfully fogged the nation into WAR!!! It is as outrageous as Sen. Hutchison’s comparison (which Russert failed to challenge!) of this investigation with the MARTHA STEWART prosecution!
Well, they hopefully have started to rouse a sleeping lion. A friend of mine who worked in the Clinton White House forwarded me an email that is making the rounds among Clinton alumni. It is a GREAT collection of quotes from a long list of R stalwarts, including Hutchison herself, about the seriousness, severity, and impeachable character of a perjury charge. Hopefully these quotes, gathered by the DSCC, can start to make the rounds (beginning here?) and some members of the SCLM can question these Senators about their shameful double-standard and hypocrisy.
From the DSCC – 1999 quotes from GOP Senators on
prejury and objstruction of justice –
Sen. Hutchison: “The reason that I voted to remove him from office is because I think the overridding issue here is that truth will remain the standard for perjury and obstruction of justice in our
criminal justice system and it must not be gray. It must not be muddy.” [AP, 2/12/99]
Sen. Frist: “There is no serious question that perjury and obstruction of justice are high crimes and misdemeanors…Indeed, our own Senate precedent establishes that perjury is a high crime and misdemeanor…The crimes of perjury and
obstruction of justice are public crimes threatening the administration of justice.” [Congressional Record, 2/12/99]
Sen. Kyl: “…there can be no doubt that perjurious, false, and misleading statements made under oath in federal court proceedings are indeed impeachable offenses…John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, said `there is no crime more extensively pernicious to society’ than perjury, precisely because it `discolors and poisons the streams of justice.'” [Congressional
Record, 2/12/99]
Sen. DeWine: “Obstruction of justice and perjury
strike at the very heart of our system of justice…Perjury is also a very serious
crime…The judiciary is designed to be a mechanism for finding the truth-so that justice can be done. Perjury perverts the judiciary,
turning it into a mechanism that accepts lies-so that injustice may prevail.” [Congressional Record, 2/12/99]
Sen. Talent: “Nobody else in a position of trust, not a CEO, not a labor union leader, not a principal of a school could do half of what the president has done and stay in office. I mean, who would have said a year ago that a president could perjure himself and obstruct justice and tamper with witnesses… and stay in office.”
[CNBC, “Hardball,” 12/19/98]
Sen. McConnell: “I am completely and utterly perplexed by those who argue that perjury and obstruction of justice are not high crimes and misdemeanors…Perjury and obstruction hammer away
at the twin pillars of our legal system: truth and justice.” [Congressional Record, 2/12/99]
Sen. Voinovich: “As constitutional scholar Charles
Cooper said, `The crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice, like the crimes of
treason and bribery, are quintessentially offenses
against our system of government, visiting injury immediately on society
itself.'” [Congressional Record, 2/12/99]
Sen. Brownback: “Perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes against the state. Perjury goes directly against the truth-finding function of the judicial branch of government.”
[Congressional Record, 2/12/99]
OK, folks, let’s get to work. Let’s get THESE quotes out there, in context of blowjob vs. war, and take back the high ground on this one.
nice work. I cleaned up your HTML a little to make it easier to read the quotes.
Nice. I think all of them apply perfectly to the Bushco situation…I’ll email this to my list!
I’ll bet a lot of repugs are wishing they’d just kept their mouths shut during the Clinton years.
Someone here wrote about a sign they saw at an-anti war demonstration and it’s the best damn thing I’ve seen in a while. Sorry can’t remember who it was but here it is:
Someone please give him a blowjob so we can have him impeached!
I wish they had that on a bumper sticker.
After I read the Kristoff aricle last night I took a little journey over to Red State.org and Conservative voice and a lot of them are down on Kay Bailey for her remarks on Sunday and are pointing out the hypocracy of this vs. Clinton.
But their view of our side of the aisle and the whole l’affair is a little more cynical and they have bought quite a few of the twisted facts their dear leaders have put out there.
One statement I saw over and over was, ‘after Harriet Meirs’….can we ‘trust’ …..Bush or (fill in names here)!
Anyway I do hope someone in the media is gathering all the tapes of the comments made by Reps. during Clinton’s impeachment.
Nice!
All I can think with my filthy brain is
Clinton got a blowjob and the world had to freaking stop. Oral sex was on the news every damn day.
Bush is fucking us and our troops and the planet and our future… and NOTHING.
Please change your diary title…you are currently using 3 words that all mean the same thing.
</snark>
This is the key. Republicans are trying to redefine Fitzgerald’s mission after-the-fact, so they have an excuse to quash charges stemming from it. After all, if they’re guilty of violating some other law, but Fitzgerald could only start persecution based on the 1982 law, they’re safe… Sure, the Bush administration might fall, but who knows what they might be able to parlay their righteous indignation into?
But, Fitzgerald has tried to cover this already, by posting at his website the letters granting him authority to expand his jurisdiction to include these new charges.
I also caught an ad on CNN that states ‘Conservatism is not a crime’ -with a picture of Earl- the lawyer that indicted Delay.
The swift boaters are in full swing mode again.
Yeah, K.B. and the whole lot of them turn my stomach.
The Dems aren’t doing anything, but relying on the courts to be the final arbiter of sanity. While I agree that’s our best hope, I wish the Dems would realize that politically that’s an awful approach.
I say we Willie Horton their asses. Push them all to defend Delay or Bush, then stab them with their own fluffy spin.
“The Bush administration exposed a CIA front company — one used to secretly monitor Weapons of Mass Destruction of foreign nations — to smear a whistleblower who told us the justification for the Iraq war was rigged.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison defends this as “just politics”. Senator Hutchison, playing with our nation’s defense is not “just politics”. Its unAmerican. Its unforgivable.
Its time to rid Washington of Senators who damage our great country for petty personal political gain…”
Okay, that’s a bit wordy, but get that serious-sounding guy who does the political comercials, a decent script-writer, and a nice collection of still images to flip around in the background, and you got yourself something powerful
The only way we’re gonna stop the smear campaign crap is to declare war on all the idiots (politicians and press pundits alike) who are dumb enough to jump into this fire.
The polls say the American people feel betrayed. Lets let them know that there is something they can do to fix it — denounce those who put politics above our national safety, and vote the bastards out.
If any Republicans want to back the bastards up, let them seal their own damn fates.