Congressional hearings on Leakgate

are currently being televised on C-SPAN3.

On a relevant tangent, it appears that special prosecutor Peter Fitzgerald is focusing on crimes that can be easily proven, namely perjury and obstruction of justice, against two of the highest White House officials, presidential advisor Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Now the questions become familiar, echoing back from history: what did the Vice President know, and when did he know it? And the President?

I was fourteen years old during the summer of Watergate and the last time a Republican administration collapsed under the creaking weight of its own corruption. The similarities between that scandal and this one -- sordid political dirty tricks taken to a criminal extreme for the sole apparent purpose of blackmailing a political opponent -- seem today to pale in comparison to 1770 dead American soldiers, thousands of innocent Iraqis killed as collateral damage, billions of dollars wasted in every direction and even misplaced, and the reputation and goodwill of the United States of America ruined.

And as of this post, not a single elected Republican official has yet broken ranks with this White House over this scandal, these lies, these crimes.

That's another difference between Watergate and Leakgate.

There is no member of the President's political party that has yet summoned the strength, the will, the courage, to speak out. No Howard Baker this time around. Eventually as this scandal continues to unfold -- sooner or later -- that will change, and our nation will be the better for that man or woman's bravery.

I think we're still many days away from that day.

Comments evaporated -- accidentally

As part of the new Haloscan code which adds the trackback feature and revises the comments box to this blog, all previously posted comments appear to have been vaporized.

I didn't do it on purpose. Honest. I didn't even want Haloscan comments, but I did want trackback, but I couldn't have one without the other, blah*blah*sob ...

Please continue to give your opinions here (in the hopes that future technological advances won't cause me to lose them).

Annnnnd we're back on Rove

The nomination of John "Here's how you can appoint your brother Prez, Jeb" Roberts gave the White House all of a 36-hour break from Rovegate. It's refreshing to see our plodding yet methodical MSM staying on the case. Barbara at Mahablog has the analysis.

"How high does this go?" asks Booman. (To Cheney, is his answer.)


Yet I am dismayed again today by the apparent capitulation of Joe Lieberman and other "moderates" who have already chosen not to contest this SC nominee, and rushed to the microphones to tell us so.

Why do they do that? Why do they give up before the bell sounds for the first round? How long will it take them to realize that the GOP places no value on temperance?

This lack of fighting spirit, this missing intestinal fortitude -- this weakness -- has gone unrewarded by the electorate enough times already as to be proven the wrong strategy.

Stand aside, Joe. We're looking for fighters from now on.

Rove's Last Stand

(From Billmon. Full size image here.)

Some suggest it's best to wait and see

on Judge Roberts. Some advocating letting him slide on in -- "Let's pick another battle", they say.

I call bullshit.

See, John Roberts is a hack. He's only been a judge for two years. He has been a partisan Republican hack for twenty years.

The Bush administration accelerated the nomination of John Roberts in order to deflect attention from Karl Rove. Really, it makes sense. One partisan hack is taking the heat off another.

Bush was selected by the Supreme Court, and now he selects a member of his campaign team to the Supreme Court in order to draw the media's attention away from the ethics violations (and felonies, most likely) by the architect of his campaign.

Partisan hackery -- old-style, Tammany Hall patronage -- at its purest.

The Supreme Court is not a tool to help deflect attention from the crimes of those who helped (s)elect you. The Supreme Court is not a place for partisan hacks. The Bush administration however, in its continuous can-you-top-this hubris, believes it can be. In fact, it is using the Supreme Court as presidents have previously used ambassadorships. This is just today's example of how fealty is prized above all else -- more important than felonious, treasonous leaks, more important than the Constitution or the rule of law, more important than people's lives.

And so this is our fight -- country over partisanship.