E.J. Dionne makes some pleasant noises in this morning’s Washington Post about the president and his defenders’ hypocritical word splicing with regards to the leaking of classified information. Mostly a rehashing things that have already been said, with a few new questions about what Ashcroft may have known when he recused himself, but a nice opinion piece nevertheless. Nice, that is, until the swirling load of naive bullshit that constitutes his concluding paragraph.
The most heartening sign that all the spin in the world will not allow the administration to evade such questions was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter’s statement on Fox News Sunday that “there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.” Specter, a Republican and a former district attorney in Philadelphia, is just the right man to take the lead in breaking the spin cycle.
Is he referring to the grinning sycophant in the picture below, who’s wearing the yellow tie and is standing behind the worst president ever, while he signs away a few more of our rights with the renewal of the Patriot Act?
Is he referring to the guy who recently refused to put Alberto Gonzales under oath while he was being questioned about the NSA domestic spying program? By golly, I think he is. The thing about guys like Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham is that you can count on them to say the right things on Sunday morning talk shows. The thing you can’t count on them to do, is the right thing. Not ever. E.J. darling, it’s time to go out and get yourself some cynicism.