The Upper Mississippi River Basin:Life, Worship, Sports, Transportation, Golf, Politics and other bizarre behaviors in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The Quincy area has a history of tolerance. We seem to suffer fools gladly.
....I was struck with the following thought:
posted by UMRBlog @ 17:29
26 comments
Christian, Father, Husband, Brother, Uncle, Veteran, Threat Assessor, Both Illini and Hawkeye Grad, Democrat, "Sticker", Friend, Neighbor, Cub Fan, Bear Fan, Outside the box thinker, Multitasker, Golfer, Believer in Civility and Good Manners until some butt makes it impossible, Throws Right, Bats Left, Good Power, Good Arm, Good Glove, Bad Speed, Hold Doors and Chairs for women,
26 Comments:
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I am still waiting for Obama to break away from the pact in the area of policy. I think that is what is holding him back in the polls. People expect him to be a different type of politician, offering different solutions than the typical politico, so far he has yet to do it.
For an example, his health care plan, paid for by a tax increase on, "the rich," could have been offered by any one of the people on the stage the other night.
Perhaps it will come with experience, or perhaps it will not come at all...
KAM
Scooter gets 2 1/2 years! LMAO!
For the record 0550 was a private email to me which migrated into this system. It was never intended by the author to show up on the blog. There was no misbehavior by anyone.
0629,
Yeah, implicit in my comment was that this was a breakaway opportunity for Obama and he pretty much spit the bit. More of the same.
TYFCB
0921,
A blight on the reputation of Yale Law School. Yale Shining star/washington insider gets end-played by a guy who didn't even graduate form college. Or, worse, The Yalie was just more expendable than the non-grad.
How did he get end played?
Scooter held the line and stayed with his original story to the Feds, all the while Rove was arranging to come in and give his refreshed recollection to avoid prosecution. "Scooter, just stick with your story and we'll take care of you." was the implicit message. Like a barn takes care of a lightning rod.
Scooter ended up with high cards in his hand that couldn't take a trick because Rove had all trump (a walk).
Fitzgerald knew who revealed CIA employee Valerie Plame’s identity to columnist Robert Novak, and it wasn’t Libby. (That honor goes to former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage.) The fact that there was a special prosecutor at all was more the result of bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice in the Bush administration than of any wrongdoing by Libby or the others who were investigated. And finally, the discrepancies between Libby’s grand-jury testimony and that of the journalists who contradicted him can be explained by differences in memory, and should not have resulted in perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Libby.
1405,
Several things wrong with your observations.
First, FitzGerald didn't know that when he interviewed Libby (or Rove).
Second, really doesn't matter to Libby's case whether there was an underlying crime or not. It's still a crime to obstruct a federal investigation or lie to a federal agent (you don't have to talk to 'em but you can't lie to 'em--Simple paradigm.)
Third, you are substituting your evaluation of the evidence for the jury's. The jury is specifically charged with the job of evaluating the testimony of the witnesses and fundamentally deciding who's lying and who's truthing. Once they find Libby's being deceptive, they take that as guilty knowledge. This is a topic I know a little bit about. If you didn't watch every minute of the trial (and it wasn't televised), your guess is not as good as the jury's. They might have gotten it wrong. It happens. But they knew more about the case than you do.
By the same token, Libby's strategy risked (and, in fact, did so) cutting his own throat. If your strategy is "Karl Rove made me take the fall" (which is what Wells promised in opening) you can win with that. If your strategy is "I was innocently mistaken" you can win with that. But you can't win with BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.
Finally, this is nothing new. Many operatives have turned non-crimes into crimes by the coverup. Jeb Stuart Magruder probably hadn't committed any crimes (at least no felonies) until he burned the Gemstone Files in his fireplace.
This is just a wild guess but I'll bet you thought a Special Prosecutor was a swell idea when Bill and Hillary Clinton were his targets.
Thanks for coming by and I do appreciate your thoughts about whether Libby should have been charged or not. Not all crimes which can be righteously proven are well charged.
Do you agree with the Clinton prosecution?
1624,
I agree that the original Fisk investigation was necessary. The extended investigation by that flatulent, effete publicity hound Starr was as unnecessary as it was ineffective.
It is impossible to answer your question as posed because there was never a prosecution. In an unrelated lawsuit WJC was disbarred/suspended in Arkansas on consent. No criminal charges were ever filed so there was no prosecution to agree or disagree with.
Now you can go ahead and talk about stains on dresses and I'll just move on to some other topic. Enjoy.
TYFCB
Do you think Bill Clinton lied to a grand jury?
0443,
I don't know your level of legal sophistication so I'll take it in layers.
Yes, to answer your question, I think his initial written, voluntary submissions were false.
Of course you realize that a charge based on that would have been different from Scooter's principal charge, lying to a federal agent. Prosecution (had there been one) would have been required to prove all the elements of perjury.
For technical, legal reasons including, without limitation to materiality and the doctrine of case completion (a declarant has until the end of a matter to correct incorrect earlier statements) perjury could not be proven.
Had there been a makeable perjury case, it should have been prosecuted by either the US attorney or another special counsel because the Whitewater investigation had long since concluded and Starr and his successor were just humping political legs at this point.
Did WJC at some point lie to or misdirect the Grand Jury empaneled to investigate Whitewater? Yes. Was that a prosecutable offense by a Federal Criminal Prosecutor? No. That's why all the tangential civil crap had to suffice for the zealots.
In the words of Wolf Blitzer: "Everybody who thinks the failure to prosecute was based upon mercy and good will for the office of the Presidency, raise your hand."
TYFCB
Do you see any disparity between the legal treatment of Libby vs Sandy Burglar?
Do you think Bush should should pardon Libby?
0841,
I don't see much use in comparing dissimilar cases, so let me take them separately.
DOJ's handling of Berger was disgraceful. There was real security risk in his behavior. He balanced his own vanity against national security and his "legacy" won. The trouble for the GOP DOJ was that there was that whole icky Wen Ho Lee precedent out there, so they caved. Disgraceful behavior by Berger and almost as disgraceful by the cleared young repubs in DOJ.
Libby's behavior is not admirable but is arguably not, in and of itself dangerous. He was required, facially, by his employment to cooperate and he feigned cooperation. He actually had a high position of trust at the time of his misconduct so pretty severe punishment is required by the sentencing guidelines.
If I had to spend 30 days on a desert island with one of 'em it'd be Libby. Because of my background and experience with defense information and then with Grand Jury information I detest failure by anyone to keep official secrets.
TYFCB
0942,
No, but I wouldn't have a bit of trouble with his sentence being commuted (another kind of executive clemency). A pardon might save Scooter's law license and I think it essential to the profession that one convicted of messing up the administration of justice be out of the system.
With that proviso, I wouldn't have any problem at all with Scooter not seeing the inside of Federal BOP facility.
TYFCB
"cleared young repubs in DOJ"
Can you shed some light on what this means?
1316,
Good catch. It's a typo. Should have read "Clear-eyed, young..."
It's a reference to mandatory YP scrubbed collegiate look and was not an essential piece but I'm sorry for the typo.
TYFCB
Noel Hillman was far from a clear-eyed young repub. For some reason though, he did let Berger skate. I doubt, however, it had anythinbg to do with Wen Ho Lee.
Hillman was not a policy-maker.
My point was not that the same prosecutor was personally involved in Wen Ho Lee. Wen Ho Lee validated the "oops" defense to unindexing classified mat'l.
To repeat, I cannot and will not defend the Berger outcome.
TYFCB
Hillman controlled every aspect of the investigation. The Judge upped the fine and included community service. This is the same Noel Hillman who supervised the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s 2000 campaign finance frauds from 2001-2005, and indicted and prosecuted the lowest level functionary in Hillary’s campaign, finance director David Rosen, pinning the rap on him to protect Hillary and Bill Clinton’s role in the affair. And a jury acquitted him of when Hillman’s case made no sense.
Little to nothing to do with the Wen Ho Lee case validating the "oops" defense to unindexing classified mat'l.
"First, FitzGerald didn't know that when he interviewed Libby (or Rove)."
Not true.
0719,
Hillman reported to the public integrity section of DOJ which was, properly enough, populated with Republicans.
At the time of Berger, the retired talking heads from Public Integrity cited Wen Ho Lee as part of the reason for the Berger leniency. If you want to say that was a fig leaf, you won't get any argument from me but you're simply incorrect as to Hillman exercising his own unfettered discretion.
Having been a subordinate prosecutor, I will concede this much. When the assigned trial lawyer makes his recommendations to his section chief,he can load the facts (and I'm just talking presentation skills here, not any kind of dishonesty) to make it more likely his supervisors will go along.
I don't think there's a dime's worth of difference in our opinions about the Berger outcome so it seems a bit pointless to parse the edges of how it happened.
TYFCB
Rove is reported to have had five interviews/sessions with the GJ/Feds. Four of them had taken place when Armitage had his "OMG" moment. In truth there were a minimum of six because the final Rove rehearsed testimony was necessarily preceded by a "Queen for a Day" session either directly or indirectly. The last one was just a dance recital so the Feds had a reason to walk Rove so it really doesn't count. If you want to count Rove's unreported Queen for a Day interview, One of five meaningful interviews of Rove happened after Armitage pooped his knickers. That interview had no chance of leading to a prosecution.
All Libby's GJ periods happened before Armitage freaked.
If you're counting slimeball Woodwards report to the special pros., keep in mind that he claims to have told Fitz'ld that he couldn't remember which one of them brought it up. Not that I believe him, but that is all Fitz'ld knew when he Libby in front of him.
This is also consistent with the way Armitage told it on GMA in his mea culpa period.
Also, you assume Armitage was the only leaker and that legal theory has never been vetted in any kind of trial. If one uses pattern evidend (Cheney's neocons uniformly sticking to their talking points on every other issue) it is not difficult to believe the Wilson trashing was policy and it was a short step to outing Plame. There is simply no evidence whether anybody else was on that grassy knoll or not.
TYFCB
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