How I “love” the hypocrisy of politicians. A few weeks ago, Scooter Libby is convicted of perjury. That’s a pretty nasty black eye on an administration that allegedly prided itself on upstanding moral behavior. So what’s the response of the right-wing (wing-nut) attack dogs on talk radio? Turn it into a referendum on Bill Clinton and his “I did not have sex with that woman” lies. The convoluted logic was that since “nothing” happened to Bubba, chargin/trying/convicting/punishing the Scoot man is unfair.
OK, for starters, Clinton was impeached, the equivalent of an indictment. So he did stand trial. Granted, in the end, his “jury,” as the system is set up, did not convict him—so be it. But to say that failure to convict means Libby gets a pass for lying about the outing of a CIA agent is absurd. It’s a bit like saying that because O.J. walked, everyone gets a free pass to murder someone. What’s more, at least the special prosecutor investigating the Plame incident was sticking to the issues relevant to the case. No, Libby didn’t out her himself, but he lied about how it happened. Contrast that to Kenn Star, who, having failed to bring down Clinton over Whitewater, moved on to, pardon the pun, nail Clinton on the one thing everyone knew you could get him for: sex.
I don’t condone Bill’s actions. He’s a scumbag for what he did, but lying about getting a little oral lovin’ from an intern pales in comparison to covering up the way a CIA agent’s identity was revealed.
Now we flash forward a few more weeks, and we have the strange case of the Attorney General who wasn’t aware, but kind of was, well, on second thought, maybe he really was, no, it seems people briefed him but he doesn’t remember the details…or whatever the story is today about how eight U.S. attorneys were kicked to the curb. Remember back to the Clinton years, and how the morally superior pundits regularly blasted the administration for so-called shady operations, even if there wasn’t anything technically illegal about [insert choice of non-issues here]?
Welcome to shoe-on-the-other-foot time. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and firing eight of them should have been a non-issue. But the administration did exactly what they accused the Clintonites of doing time and again—not being upfront about it and creating an aura of suspicion. Why lie about what Gonzales knew and his role in it all? And why refuse to let Rove and company testify under oath and on the record? After all, if you have nothing to hide, there shouldn’t be a reason to be afraid of a little grilling by Congress. Instead, the White House continues to invent new explanations about who knew what, making it clear that Alberto Gonzales is a liar. Not exactly an admirable quality in the Attorney General.
The Republicans and Democrats in Washington are both a bunch of rotten apples. The same people who vilified Clinton (including the astoundingly, astonishingly hypocritical Newt Gingrich, who managed to criticize Bill’s infidelities while banging one of his aides behind his wife’s back) are defending the lies of the Bush camp.
Meanwhile, the left side of the aisle is grandstanding for the cameras by inserting egregious, outlandish pork-barrel spending items into a bill that was ostensibly to provide needed funds for our troops overseas. Agree or disagree with the war, adding bribes to a military funding bill to buy votes simply to poke the President with a stick over an artificial pull-out date—that everyone knows will be vetoed—is indefensible and immoral in more ways than I can count. And this nonsense comes from the party that campaigned last year on bringing change to Washington. If this is what they mean by change, I don’t want it. Give me a clean slate of Libertarians any day of the week over the sorry bunch of jackasses we have down there now.
