Well, that isn’t what we’re talking about. The claim was made that Bush was in on this whole thing from the beginning. I haven’t seen any evidence that he was involved at any time at all, much less at the beginning.
A noble thing to do, for sure, but I can’t imagine any president doing that. What he might do, if he really thinks the guy screwed up, is to tell him to resign. Sending him up in front of Congress doesn’t seem like it’s even in the realm of possibilities.
Fiztgerald could have brought charges against Cheney if he had evidence that a crime was committed. Since he’s seen way more info on this whole affair than any of us has, and since he hasn’t brought any charges against him I’m not ready to say that there was any criminal activity involved. There probably was some highly unethical behavior, but that’s a separate matter.
All that we can say with confidence is that there wasn’t enough evidence for Fitzgerald to think he could make a case. And that’s probably true since there has been little adverse comment about his failure to pursue action further than Libby.
Agreed. And my comment about Cheney was straying from what I was asking about anyway. I actually don’t think Bush was involved, mainly because I haven’t seen one shred of evidence that he was, and I can think of some very good reasons for him not to be. I can’t make the same statement about Cheney, though.
Once the whole thing became public, I think Bush handled it very poorly and did not act as someone would who was truly interested in correcting things. And I think the commutation of the sentence stinks. We can all do our happy dance in Jan '09.
The reason president Cheney and VP Bush did not get directly attached to Plamegate was Libbys second charge. Obstruction of Justice . He did not obstruct the investigation from going down. It was headed up and he lied and obstructed to prevent that.
By the way the enormous fine has already been paid 250,400 dollars. Poor guy really got hurt.
I’m not sure if I’m responding to a hijack anymore or if I’m responding to the actual thread…
In the government and contemporary philosophy classes I took in college (one of each, admittedly, but they were definitely interesting) we heard all SORTS of views. Contemporary Moral Problems had a section on abortion: one article to the “no no Lord never” extreme, one to the “up to the day before giving birth for reasons of ‘I don’t want to be fat for my new dress’ should be unremarkable” extreme. And of course, most of the class disagreed strongly with both. But then we argued and went back and forth through the middle and read all sorts of other arguments, rants, and articles. We weren’t tested on what we thought, we were tested on how well we could argue.
We knew our Government professor was strongly against the electoral college in modern-day presidential elections. As I recall, he assigned half the class to write an essay defending it and the other half to write an essay arguing against it. He gave good grades to good arguments, not to arguments he agreed with.
I’m a liberal, I think. But if I had a government class where someone showed an Olbermann clip (I admit I havent’ watched the above yet) and expected the whole class to agree, if the whole class was rant time against the President and the administration wtih no counterarguments by the professor or any of my classmates, I’d be seriously annoyed.
Ah, yes, I’d forgotten about that. That’s certainly the high point so far. Surprising that he did it, and it’s just a shame that it’s about the only positive thing he’ll be known for. There really was a lot of potential to change the world for the better in the wake of 9/11, had he the wisdom to know what to do.
I blame the decline in participation in the process by what I observe to be the switch to negative campaign advertisements. The ads are designed not to get people to vote for a specific candidate, but to get the other guy’s supporters to stay home on election day. It goes back 40 years or more, I remember the little girl with the daisy in the anti-Goldwater ad, but it gets worse with each election from what I can see.
As people get more of their news from television, it gets worse for turnout as well. In the newspaper it’s pretty easy to avoid articles that you know don’t support your preconceived ideas. On the television, not so much. Of course, with the internet providing sites like The Daily Kos and Newsmax you can think you’re informed, and never risk being contradicted, no matter how ignorant you are. I’d expect to see voting rates increasing over time.
The results won’t be any better informed, but that’s a different problem.
Look, I agree that stuff is fucked up, but I’d be willing to bet the farm that there were teams and teams of highly paid lawyers (on our dime of course) that found the necessary interpretations and loopholes to make it happen. In as far as torture, Bush’s regime ain’t the first, and wont be the last, don’t kid yourself.
Point is, all any of these balloon milkers need is honest-to-god, no shit, hold-it-in-your-hand proof of something, anything (even a blue dress) and viola! Let the impeachment begin. They. Have. Nothing. Nothing but a highly acute sense of moral outrage and general anger at the really horrible shit our country is responsible for under GeeDub’s watch.
Oooh fuck that sticks in my craw. Whenever there’s some sordid political scandal some (or some group of) fuckwits tacks the obligatory -gate on the end of it.
Fuck I hate that shit. It was called Watergate because of WHERE it was, not WHAT it was.
I always thought the purpose of negative campaign ads was to get voters to turn out – to vote against the ads’ target, and only incidentally for the candidate who paid for them.
[shrug] Get used to it. The “-gate” construction will be with us from now to the end of the Republic. Or until the end of all forms of actual or suspected public dishonesty or corruption. It’s Nixon’s legacy to America.
Actually, no. The opposite effect is well-documented and well-known among political operatives. It may not have been the initial intent, but these days, the purpose of negative ads is to poison the electoral atmosphere and cause the undecided fence-sitters, the ones who aren’t committed either way, to become disgusted and stay home. This almost invariably favors the incumbent, for obvious reasons.
