I had the sme thought on reading the Leonnig piece — the shot at the left-wing blogs seemed out of place given that, in my opinion, it has been the lefty bloggers who did the best job of explaining how it was that Rove was not indicted. Not that he coulda/woulda/shoulda been indicted.

I have seen more than one judge get really pissed at attorneys who overload their submissions (or solicit amicus briefs) with stuff written by heavyweights (legal or otherwise) in the hopes that the judge would pay more attention to who was doing the writing than to what was written. My standard response to that tactic is to write a good brief and point out that, in these situations, the number of luminaries weighing in for the other side is inversely proportional to the merits of the other side’s argument.

I don’t know Walton well, but he strikes me as someone who does not care much that tactic. Which makes me wonder, like Christy does, about who is calling the shots on the defense.

“Law is reason, free from passion”
Aristotle
(This was,like, quoted in Elle Wood’s very first, like, lecture!)

Elle’s new law school friend, hunky Luke Wilson, (hey, he looks kinda like a young Joe Wilson…) advises her to read the footnotes because that’s where she’ll find the answers to all the exam questions…

After all, how can you read this and not think snark, big time?

And for what it is worth, Carol Leonnig is a sweetheart of a journalist, and I wish she got to write more pieces like this one. Good on ya, Carol! (H/T to Effwit for the heads up on this piece.)

My oh my! I wonder how Fred Hiatt likes the flavor of that crow.

P.S.: Does anyone else have trouble getting the QUOTE and the CLOSE TAGS buttons to work. (I’m using firefox, and they don’t work for me since the upgrade a few days ago.)

Sadly, Ted didn’t present the most crucial evidence in the case, that the FBI stole the crucial evidence that would have exonerated Hale because Clinton told them too, so he was convicted. Even Ken Starr appeared at the sentencing hearing, his only appearance ever in an Arkansas court, to plead leniency.. The cruel judge would hear none of it however and demanded repayment to the government, Last I heard Hale was repaying the millions at $75 a month, I’m not sure Olsen is getting any more for his probably six figure bill.

The Libby brief tries to pretend that demonstrating that an issue to be appealed is “a ‘close’ question or one that very well could be decided the other way” (which they must do) is a lower standard than simply demonstrating that an issue to be appealed has “merit” (which is irrelevant for purposes of their motion). Uh huh.

Under the CIPA Sec. 6(c) portion of their memory defense appeal issue, the brief tries to declare Judge Walton’s individual determinations as to the adequacy of Intelligence Community substitutions for specific pieces of classified evidence “close questions” that could be decided the other way on appeal. If in fact miraculously decided the other way on appeal (Judge Walton, in his discretion, bent over backward for the defense on these matters), deciding these 6(c) substitution questions differently would either require more disclosure by the IC on individual items of evidence, or else force a graymail dismissal, but it would not change the fact that Libby chose to remain silent at trial.

Because Libby chose to remain silent at trial, his constantly-argued and underlying rationale throughout the CIPA Sec. 6(a)/6(c) process for insisting that the admission at trial of all of this highly-classified (PDB-level) information was crucial to his state of mind and “faulty memory” defense – because it would back up, accompany and help prove Libby’s testimony at trial about his complete preoccupation with matters of life and death (except when such matters touched on the fate of one CIA covert agent) – evaporated into thin air. As had the graymail dismissal he and his counsel were obviously fighting tooth and nail to achieve, pre-trial.

So what Libby is now left to lamely argue is that all these allegedly-ominous, looming PDB threats which he was exposed to on daily basis for years, would overwhelm and impress a jury never before exposed to them and lead them to deduce on their own what impact such information must have had on its recipients such as Libby, and thus it was unfair to the defense to bar that highly-classified threat-laden information from admission at trial (through the testimony of Libby’s CIA briefers), after Libby chose not to testify about his own state of mind as it related to those regular daily CIA intelligence briefings he received.

The brief then proceeds to claim that by invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent at trial, Scooter Libby’s right to present a defense was violated by the government and the Court in response. This circular logic and specious argument is arrived at by blaming the government and the Court for believing the arguments the defense made in its efforts to force as much classified information into the trial as possible during the CIPA Sec. 6(a) stage [the pre-trial graymail effort] – whereas the defense claims in fact and law that the government and the Court should have known that all those representations by Libby and arguments by his counsel on behalf of his faulty memory testimony-to-be were so much hot air, and he never promised to take the stand but instead hinted that he wouldn’t a few times along the way (including supposedly during voir dire…) – and thus it’s an unfair outrage to the defense and to the defendant’s rights that the government didn’t interrupt the defense’s opening argument at trial in order to object to its reading of a 6(c) statement admitting relevant classified facts that had been admitted as relevant by the Judge in expectation of Libby’s professedly-forthcoming testimony. And so it goes in ‘never admit you’re wrong while claiming every privilege known to man land’…

One potential, and tempting, target for attack that this brief and the public furor accompanying it raises into full view, is the issue of whether the pending Libby appeal is in fact primarily a delaying tactic pending a pardon – a “dilatory” tactic which a Judge has to decide by the preponderance of the evidence, as one threshold issue, is not the motive of the defense but that the defendant is appealing for purposes other than delay, before granting release pending appeal. One argument in support of the delaying tactic motive would be the very swarm of Libby Lobby efforts for a pardon we see (and have seen for months) in numerous newspapers and other forums around the country by friends of Libby, carefully coordinated with the efforts of his defense team… An argument that would turn a Libby Defense Fund “strength” into a weakness – now there’s a not-so-novel idea…

Helen @ 64

S.O.S in MA@57

I think the reason why Marcy and Jane’s letter did not appear in the PDF file was that it wans’t a pro or con Scooter letter, but, rather an appeal to allow the letters to become public.

Interesting point, Thx Helen @ 64. Most probably true… but I went thru the ‘Lake for that letter’s text but couldn’t find it; all I remember of it was that it was in their usual razor-sharp rhetoric.

Anyone got its text or a pointer thereto? TIA :)

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.c…..t_mai.html

…Judge Walton’s footnote indicates a certain level of disgust with the “regular rules oughtn’t apply to our crowd” mentality that oozes from the Free Scooter brigades.

Hey, if the selfish Neocons want to give Americans a free scooter, I’ll take mine in blue.

It’s about time we got something back for putting up with their lying BS over the last 7 years.

- Tom ;)