Ambrya wrote:
gbaji wrote:
And Yossarian. I always imagine Karl Rove as a Republican Josh Lyman. A bit rabid. A bit nasty. But he gets the job done at the end of the day.
Dunno. Just works for me...
Somehow I doubt Josh Lyman ever said "We will fu
[/i]ck him. Do you hear me? We will fu[i]ck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fu[i][/i]cked him." about the opposition's leadership.
You haven't watched that show enough. Josh has said nearly those identical words on serveral occasions. He's definately the attack dog on that show. Big time. Or do you not remember the episode when he drove a Democrat Congressman to switch parties because he couldn't help but play "extreme hardball" politics.
And Joph. That's a cop out and you know it.
We can debate endlessly whether or not a perjury or obstruction charge is legitimate or not. The fact is that it's *not* what the original investigation was formed to look into. That was my original point. An investigation looking into who outted Plame should find out who outted Plame. Simple as that. I then predicted that Fitz would not be able to find anyone in the administration to blame that outting on, so he'd hit them with obstruction and/or perjury charges instead.
Which, it appears, is *exactly* what is happening.
Valid or bogus is irrelevant. The fact is that he's failing to do what he was supposed to do, and is "settling" on some other charges to hit the administration with. I've already discussed at length why I feel he's doing that.
Answer this question. If he'd uncovered a clear leak of Plames identity within the White House, do you think he'd be bothering with other charges (unless they were directly involved in someone trying to hide that leak of course!)? No. He wouldn't. By any measure, this is what happens to most investigations of this type when they fail to find sufficient evidence of the crime they are investigating. They turn instead to examining the testimony to see if they can find inconsistencies on which to toss around lesser charges so that it looks like they accomplished something.
That's what makes the "bogus" in my mind. You can argue otherwise, but to me the point of an investigation is to find whether someone commited a specific crime, not cause people to commit more (or put them into positions where it can be made to look like they might have). If the only charges you can file in your investigation are for actions taken by people as a direct result of the investigation itself, then I have to question the value of the investigation in the first place.
It's "bogus" in exactly the way the charges of perjury against Clinton were bogus. It's not hard to craft questions in such a way as to make people in the political spotlight have to make a choice between revealing something that is not illegal but will be looked on poorly by the public and concealing that thing and risking a perjury charge. That's "bogus" in my mind. Isn't it in yours? You certainly thought so about Clinton. Why not in this case?
How about we see what happens and see what charges get handed out, and see just how bogus they are?