OT but too funny: Tim Griffin is interviewing to run the new great white hope of the GOP’s Fred Thompson’s campaign!

Link

ON Topic and infuriating:
Waiting for Mr. Griffin’s moment of truth regarding the “caging” of voters.
KR’s smug, lippy, and arguably felonious gofer is collecting a gov’t paycheck as a US atty… and now he wants to be someone’s campaign consultant? Lock that boy up and show him Crest commercials till he rats-out Karl, already!

…had I been seriouly contemplating a perjury charge for her, I would have laid out the rationale for making it.

I’m stumped – are you saying that your bluster about a perjury charge is just trash talk meant to entertain but not inform? OK, I agreed, and still agree, and stand by my point that the notion of charging Ms. Toensing with perjury for offering an expert opinion is absurd. Welcome aboard.

That is a sobering thought.

http://commentisfree.guardian……ot_he.html

How does that go “the path to hell is paved with good intentions”. Perle and his cronies have sure created “hell on earth” for the Iraqi people. If only Perle would suit up and go to Iraq to experience first hand the hell that he helped create.

I had a hard time putting a finger on what so annoyed me about your point #2.

It’s that non-sequitur, “some liberals”. The people at this site don’t attribute it to “conservatism” that venues like NRO defend Libby and claim Plame wasn’t covert or that Wilson was a dandy or whatever ad-hominem argument of the day is. We recognize the very plain and vital partisan motivation in the need of people like Toensing and Bond and everyone else to defend the administration and counterattack. That’s precisely why Fitzgerald is such a constrast, and, therefore, a credible witness. Mounting a vigorous prosecution doesn’t make him a partisan, even in a case the worst sort of partisan Republican would prefer tried in the political arena, outside of a courtroom and, therefore, outside the law.

George at 8 — You know, we were hearing before the trial that Bush would pardon him before any evidence got presented. Then that Bush would pardon him before a verdict was rendered. I think Bush is more concerned with saving his own miserable ass at the moment, and a pardon, if any at all, will only come at the very end of the Bush presidency on his way out the door — which would be awfully ironic considering Libby was Marc Rich’s attorney who helped to secure his pardon that way and all the little wingnut heads exploded about it.

There will not be a pardon so long as the Democratic Congress is providing oversight, because it would leave Libby without his 5th Amendment protections and he would be forced to testify in open hearings about what he knows under subpoena. Just imagine for a moment how much the Bush folks — especially Cheney — would look forward to that.

Heh. Wonder if any of the cons banging the “pardon poor lil’ ol’ Scooter” drums realize this?

Woodward on the Larry King Show. Woodward responding to questions about the Plame investigation

KING: What do you think will happen?

WOODWARD: But Michael’s point is exactly right. There is deep mystery here. It only grows with time and people are speculating and there are — there is so little that people really know.

Now there are a couple of things that I think are true. First of all this began not as somebody launching a smear campaign that it actually — when the story comes out I’m quite confident we’re going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter and that somebody learned that Joe Wilson’s wife had worked at the CIA and helped him get this job going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq/Niger uranium deal.

And, there’s a lot of innocent actions in all of this but what has happened this prosecutor, I mean I used to call Mike Isikoff when he worked at the “Washington Post” the junkyard dog. Well this is a junkyard dog prosecutor and he goes everywhere and asks every question and turns over rocks and rocks under rocks and so forth.

KING: And doesn’t leak.

WOODWARD: And it doesn’t leak and I think it’s quite possible that though probably unlikely that he will say, you know, there was no malice or criminal intent at the start of this. Some people kind of had convenient memories before the grand jury. Technically they might be able to be charged with perjury.

But I don’t see an underlying crime here and the absence of the underlying crime may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful prosecutor to say, you know, maybe this is not one to go to the court with.

KING: You’re saying this is a maybe.

WOODWARD: A maybe, only a maybe.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA…..kl.01.html

Someone during the Goodling investigation claimed the Libby hearing was a sign of Democratic paranoia. Does anyone else remember which member of Congress made this statement? I wish we could perform a keyword search in the Congressional Record, for we could then compile a list of names and begin demanding official apologies on the House and Senate floors.

I think they have a thirty day period during which they can revise and extend remarks. I laughed when I read this.

Do peasants or the common folk have 30 days to revise their testimonies in a case/situation like this?

Or is this special privilige just extended to …..Toensing types?

1. The notion that an expert witness will be hit for perjury for expressing to Congress the same opinion she expressed in print continues to be absurd. But if you are desperate for a perjury charge, read down in the Newsweek story:

In an appendix to a new report released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee about Iraq War intelligence, three Republican senators—including Kit Bond of Missouri, vice chairman of the panel—filed “additional views” harshly criticizing Valerie Wilson and her husband for allegedly misleading the committee in 2004 about the role she played in suggesting her husband’s trip to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium from that country. Citing allegedly contradictory statements she has made more recently to a House committee, the GOP senators called for a re-interview of Valerie Wilson.

I was away for the weekend – was the coverage of that disclosure extensive here? A link to the smoking gun memo.

2. The notion that something is so because a prosecutor says it is so is absurd. Many liberals recognize this in other contexts. Oh, wee – a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I am sure there are no little minds here.

3. Per an email from the CIA Counsel to Rep. Hoekstra, the CIA Counsel still wasn’t clear, as of April 2007, about Ms. Plame’s status:

On March 21, Hoekstra [Ranking Republican on the House Intel Committee] again requested the CIA to define Mrs. Wilson’s status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA’s director of congressional affairs, said only that “it is taking longer than expected” to reply because of “the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking.”

You probably know, of course, that coverage was extensive here:
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.c……html#more