Gutless Old Party?
Investors Business Daily tells the Republican Party to stop being so afraid of indictuments in the Plame matter. The distinctions between Karl Rove's behavior and that of Bill Clinton is, in fact, well worth noting:
But Karl Rove did not lie under oath. Karl Rove did not obstruct justice. Karl Rove is guilty of warning a Time magazine reporter that Joseph Wilson — a former Kerry adviser who wanted to keep his wife's job with the CIA so secret he attracted attention to himself by writing an op-ed for The New York Times saying his CIA-arranged trip proved President Bush a liar — was himself a liar.
The law Karl Rove is accused of violating was written to protect CIA station chiefs and their operatives abroad from leftist agitators like Philip Agee who intentionally revealed their names to foreign adversaries.
It was not meant to criminalize private conversations with reporters on "double supersecret background" in which the desk jockey wife of an op-ed writer for the Times was mentioned but not identified.
They've got a point.
But Karl Rove did not lie under oath. Karl Rove did not obstruct justice. Karl Rove is guilty of warning a Time magazine reporter that Joseph Wilson — a former Kerry adviser who wanted to keep his wife's job with the CIA so secret he attracted attention to himself by writing an op-ed for The New York Times saying his CIA-arranged trip proved President Bush a liar — was himself a liar.
The law Karl Rove is accused of violating was written to protect CIA station chiefs and their operatives abroad from leftist agitators like Philip Agee who intentionally revealed their names to foreign adversaries.
It was not meant to criminalize private conversations with reporters on "double supersecret background" in which the desk jockey wife of an op-ed writer for the Times was mentioned but not identified.
They've got a point.
posted by LadybugUSA at 9:46 AM
8 Comments:
But Karl Rove did not lie under oath. Karl Rove did not obstruct justice.
Carol, since you post this article and end with, "They've got a point" you have taken ownership of it. As such, I have one simple question.
How do you know that Karl Rove did not lie under oath or obstruct justice?
Do you have access to the testimony, Carol? The IBD article certainly didn't provide any evidence beyond a bald assertion.
The simple answer to the simple question is that you do not know this for a fact.
Carol your quoted observation is on a legal slope so slippery a spider with a pick axe and pitons couldn't climb it.
But that's fine and as it should be. That is why we have courts and that is where this debate should be decided. In a court of law. Not on websites and not in the media.
If the evidence is as thin as you suggest, your homeboys will walk and it will be sunny days in DC again. Otherwise, you and yours would be best to take your lumps before the "whiny" label does a Reagan and switches parties.
Carol, my problem with the post is more basic than the other (also proper) responses: Since when is criminal activity based on violation of the intent of the law instead of the law itself?
I could go outside, right now, go 65 MPH (the freeway is 55 and it's a sunny day) and cheerfully explain to the officer that when the 55 mile limit was established, cars were much more dangerous and the roads were narrower. I violated the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law, and so I shouldn't be ticketed.
In fairness, this fallacious thinking is Investor's Daily, not yours. But you do indeed suggest agreement by saying "they've got a point."
Not really. Only if we criminalize the spirit of a violation of written law instead of the actual violation do they have a point.
Carol -
There is a big difference between Treason and endangering our National Security with getting blow jobs in the White House.
This administration is doing everything in it's power to destroy our Country and you are OK with it?
Oh I just can't stand it. If Karl Rove broke the law, then yes, he should be indicted and convincted. But anyone who takes a good close look at this situation just can't get too exercised about it. If Valerie Plame's identity was a secret, it was the worst kept secret in town.
And if I hear one more time that all Clinton did was "lie about sex," I'm going to scream. He LIED IN COURT. Mr. Twister is ready to string up Karl Rove -- not for the subject matter, but for the purported lie.
When did one lie in court become more important or more egregious than another lie?? The Bar didn't see a distinction when the disbarred Clinton, did they?
The Republicans are NOT doing all they can to destroy this country. What absured, uninformed hyperbole. You might not agree with policy decisions, just like I didn't agree with the disasterous decisions by Carter and Clinton, but never once did I think they were "trying to destroy the country". That kind of idiocy does nothing to advance your argument.
Greta,
You miss the point. The big lie is not even Rove's (if he did lie) it is the fact that the administration (as evidenced by the Downing Street memos) was making preparation to invade Iraq well before any substantation of WMD's. THAT IS THE LIE WE ARE MOST CONCERNED ABOUT.
Rove/Libby are to Bush/Cheney what John Dean/John Ehrlichman were to Richard Nixon. If they go to jail it will be to cover-up the big lie that lead us into a WAR. To compare this lie to Clinton's is what people are finding SO disturbing.
Greta, do you not see the difference between invading a country on false pretenses and having sex with an intern? If you don't see the difference than you are so blinded by your political allegence nothing I or anyone else can say will change your mind.
Greta wrote, If Valerie Plame's identity was a secret, it was the worst kept secret in town.
Really? Surprisingly none of Valerie Plame's neighbors seemed to know she was a covert operative. Do you want to provide any evidence for this claim?
Greta continued, When did one lie in court become more important or more egregious than another lie??
Aye, here's the rub and the heart of the issue...
There are, in essence, two ways to approach the seriousness of perjury. The first is that all perjury--no matter the subject lied about--is intrinisically equivalent. The other view is that the seriousness of perjury is tied to the seriousness of the underlying crime.
For example, pretend Scooter Libby deliberately lied to the grand jury about what newspapers he read (because he didn't want Judith Miller to know that he was sweet on her). The absolutists talk about the "sacredness of the oath" and "the rule of law" and would try to throw poor Scooter in jail. The relativists say, "Yes, Scooter lied under oath, but cut the guy some slack--it didn't really matter."
During the Clinton impeachment, the Republicans were the absolutists and argued that any perjury amounted to high crimes and misdemeanors. The Democrats, on the other hand, claimed that Clinton was lying about an extramarital affair and that wasn't such a big deal--hence the perjury did not meet the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors
Step forward to today and the left wing side can say with perfect lack of hypocrisy that they view leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent somewhat akin to treason and hence perjury about the same must be handled more sternly than perjury about a blow job.
You put forward the 1998 Republican position. To whit, claiming that any perjury is a threat to our judicial system and the foundations of our country. Congratulations, you are consistent in your views.
I, however, put forth the 1998 Democratic position. Since I feel leaking the identity of an undercover CIA operative is something akin to treason, I am also being consistent.
Carol, however, keeps trying to play both the "perjury is bad"/"prosecutorial discretion is called for" depending on if she is talking about Bill Clinton or Scooter and Turd Blossom. Such is called hypocrisy.
Well, since this is all boiling down to the war in Iraq, you're right. You won't convince me that going to war in Iraq wasn't the right thing to do. I don't care when they planned it.
What I know from personal experience is that the Middle East is riddled with terrorists and others who hate Western lifestyles and are driven by radical Islamic beliefs to destroy what they abhor. That includes us.
No amount of appeasement is going to make these terrorists go away. It's going to take killing existing terrorists, destroying their networks, and changing the culture of the Middle East.
By giving Iraq a form of Democracy, we've taken a small step toward helping to change that culture. I celebrated when women voted in Iraq and when country voted for a constitution. A constitution with freedoms -- imagine that. It's far cry from the killing fields and rape rooms of the Saddam era.
I love that liberals will slap "Free Tibet" stickers on their cars but willingly turn a blind eye to the horrors that took place in Iraq.
We know Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He used them on the Kurdish people. The United Nations believed he had them, but they thought they would mend his ways with idle threats. We know he paid the families of suicide bombers. I shutter to think about what else he and his sons were capable of doing.
Please, don't lecture me about blind political allegiance when you yourself can't see the truth.
It isn't difficult to see that you are going for "quid pro quo." Clinton was impeached. You want Bush impeached. I can't help but believe it's less about ideology and "truth" than it is about vengenance.
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