Charles Pierce and Mike Tomasky’s hysterical weeper contest

Previously published here.

I’m inclined to award this to Michael Tomasky for his “Fire Holder”  article in which he gives the following hilarious advice to President Obama:

And if Obama permits these things to linger, they’ll poison the situation on Capitol Hill, which hardly needs any more poisoning, and the substantive bills he wants to pass will be at risk because the GOP base will be that much more intolerant of any Republicans voting for anything Obama favors.

OH MY! Don’t “poison the situation” on Capital Hill or else the GOP will start filibustering everything in sight, run hundreds of phony investigations, try to repeal Obamacare nonstop, make strenuous efforts to sabotage the economy – by golly you might even get to a situation where a Republican Congressman yells out an insult during the State of the Union address, maybe “YOU LIE”.   For God’s sake, the GOP may become so angry and extreme it will steal elections or start wars for no reason. Please President Obama, preserve the present mood on the Hill so your “substantive bills” will be seriously considered by Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan, not to mention Steve King and Louis Gohmert. Michael Tomasky’s world – where Republicans are reasonable.

Nearly as good as this counterfactual flight of weepy fantasy is Tomasky’s reasoning for firing Holder

And so the subpoena—extremely far-reaching as these things go, and possibly sought in violation of the guidelines governing such action.

Oh my! A totally legal subpoena that was “extremely far reaching” (something Tomasky knows without actually knowing how far reaching it was) that was possibly in violation of guidelines! Guidelines, no less. That’s a stunning indictment isn’t it.  Well, the President better take Mr. Tomasky’s advice and dump Holder for this possible guideline violation before the GOP gets all pissy and starts blocking his nominations – because God knows we’d hate to go into the next election without a strong AG to defend the voting rights act. Oh, wait.

But then there’s Charles Pierce, hopping frantically from foot to foot as if he’s just finished drinking beer at his favorite bar through a Celtics loss  only to find out that  the men’s room key has been lost.

This isn’t hard. This is what made Egil (Bud) Krogh famous. This is what got people sent to jail in the mid-1970s. This is the Plumbers, all over again, except slightly more formal this time, and laundered, disgracefully, even more directly through the Department Of Justice

Jesus wept! Here’s a tip, Egil Krogh Watergate Plumber and his colleagues went to jail because they violated the law. When the justice Department issues a subpoena, that’s called following the law. See, there is a difference between LEGAL and ILLEGAL and it is not that LEGAL is “slightly more formal”.  The problem with Egil Krogh and Whitey Bulger for that matter was not too much informality. It was too much LAW BREAKING. And Holder not only did not break the law, he apparently worked very hard to keep out of the case to avoid even an appearance of impropriety.

And while we are going over obvious differences in kind that seem too hard to remember when you are overwhelmed with the vapors, let’s think about the difference between spying on political opponents (Egil Krogh) and investigating an illegal and dangerous compromise of US security. Just because Bush and Cheney and Nixon wanted their political bullshit to be treated as national secrets doesn’t mean there are no national secrets, no data that needs to be kept confidential. If a FBI agent leaked names of informers to Whitey Bulger, to pick an example that could never happen in Michael Tomasky’s world, wouldn’t the government be duty bound to go after him? What about if someone leaks information about a perfectly legit US intelligence operation in Yemen?  To me, and I know I’m just a craven Obot unable to make these kind of moral judgments, leaking that information is not only criminal, but it is dangerous and immoral. You see there is a difference between violating secrecy to expose wrongdoing – whistleblowing –  and violating secrecy to make Ron Fournier feel more like a real little boy or to damage an Administration run by a black guy.  The second thing is not admirable or defensible.