Ah, yes, the hypocrisy issue
There is probably no point in commenting on the hypocrisy in politics of any stripe - it's like noting that auto mechanics get their hands dirty. But I will do so anyway.
Consider this line from Newt Gingrich speaking about how important it was to impeach Bill Clinton:
'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a
leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept . . . perjury in your highest officials.'
Consider those last few words. Conservatives of the Charles Krauthammer, National Review sort are now hyperventilating over the injustice done to poor Scooter Libby for... committing perjury before a federal grand jury. And he is one of "your highest officials."
But of course, in this case he is also one of their highest officials.
(btw, have any of you noticed how much my spelling has improved? Now that I have a super fast computer and the New Blogger? Even I can learn to use a spell checker.)
posted by Clemens @ 12:41 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Ok, I was out of the country (thankfully!) when Clinton was impeached, but unless I'm very much mistaken, Clinton lied under oath about a personal matter, the prosecuters were supposed to be investigating something entirely different, and his lies only came about when a very over-priced federal prosecution couldn't come up with anything else?
Isn't that a wee bit different from someone going out their way to deliberately end a woman's lifetime career of service to her country, and put her life in danger at the same time?
I agree pretty much. I was taking the minimalist position. Which still makes them look like hypocrits. You should go over to nationalreview.com to get a taste of it. It would be funny, if the stakes were something other than, say, the sould of the Republic.
I am proud to disagree completely. :-P
Kenneth Starr nailed a bunch of people, some of whom served actual jail time (for example Tucker and the McDougals); Clinton was hardly his only target, although Clinton may have been the largest target. The judge in the case even jailed Susan McDougal for contempt of court, because she refused to testify about what the Clintons knew about the affair. This is a matter involving substantial amounts of money. So, Starr's going after Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice on sex is similar to the IRS going after Capone for tax evasion.
The Fitzgerald case is nothing like this. To say that people "deliberately" tried to end a woman's lifetime of service to her country is a gross exaggeration. Since Fitzgerald isn't prosecuting anyone for breaking the law on revealing covert agents, the conservatives appear to be correct when they complain that no crime was committed by revealing her connection with Wilson. Otherwise, it flies in the face of reason that Fitzgerald wouldn't charge anyone for this, especially the ones who admitted it freely: Armitage, who prompted the leak, or Rove, or Fleischer. The charge of "hypocrisy" is way overblown, especially since Libby was not the source of the original leak. It would make more sense if Fitzgerald were going after Libby only because he couldn't prove that Libby had committed the crime at the heart of his investigation, which obviously Libby did not.
There's nothing hypocritical in saying the wrong thing if you genuinely forget. I'm not convinced that Libby forgot; I suspect that Fitzgerald is correct when he says that Libby may have lied because he was afraid he was being set up as a fall guy. Nevertheless, it's nothing compared to Clinton's conspiring with witnesses to lie on the stand, and it certainly pales in comparison to Sandy Berger's stealing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives. Yet he received no jail time for that, and no one seems particularly outraged even.
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