Sunday, October 30, 2005
GOP Talking Point: White House Exonerated On Leaking Classified Information/Identity
The GOP surrogates hit heavy, hard, and often on this morning's news talk shows that because only Scooter Libby was indicted on perjury/false statements/obstruction charges, Fitzgerald couldn't indict on the Identities Protection Act and there was no "real" crime committed here.
John Aravosis at AMERICAblog puts this meme to rest more articulately than I could, so I quote it:
No one on the Sunday shows, not Pumpkinhead Russert, not Emptyhead Woodruff, not even Senate Minority Leader Reid, seemed to be able to counter the Bobo Brooks/Bill Safire/George Will argument that no real crime was committed and Fitzgerald couldn't indict on the IIPA statute BECAUSE Libby lied and obstructed justice.
Jesus Fucking Christ, how hard a concept is that to understand? Are the members of the American media so fucking stupid that they cannot grasp this idea or are they so easily manipulated by the Rovian spin that they just repeat GOP talking points ad nauseum and without compunction? Or are they just on the Armstrong Williams/Maggie Gallagher payroll?
Could these media people with the journalism degrees from Columbia and Berkeley do their fucking jobs and hold the people in power accountable instead of simply repeating the power elite's talking points like they're newsworthy and/or truthful?
John Aravosis at AMERICAblog puts this meme to rest more articulately than I could, so I quote it:
Of course Fitzgerald didn't charge anybody with violating the secrecy statutues - Libby obstructed the entire investigation
by John in DC - 10/30/2005 11:39:00 AM
Fitzgerald mentioned this on Friday, but it's worth repeating, since the Republican surrogates are now suggesting that no "real" crime occured because Fitzgerald has yet to charge anyone with leaking classified information.
Scooter, and possibly others (Official A comes to mind), obstructed the investigation. They lied to the investigators and thwarted the effort of the investigators to find out the truth. It wouldn't be surprising that when the key witness is lying and refusing to come clean, to this day, that the investigation hasn't yet charged anyone with the underlying crime. I mean, duh. As Fitzgerald noted, this is why perjury and obstruction of justice are such serious crimes. Scooter is literally stopping Fitzgerald from finding out what happened. So to suggest that Scooter's apparently-successful (so far) effort to obstruct the investigation by lying somehow proves that Scooter and Rove didn't violate any secrecy laws, well, that's just absurd.
And Al Capone was innocent of being a mobster, by the way. After all, they only got him on tax evasion, so that proves the prosecutor concluded he was innocent of everything else.
No one on the Sunday shows, not Pumpkinhead Russert, not Emptyhead Woodruff, not even Senate Minority Leader Reid, seemed to be able to counter the Bobo Brooks/Bill Safire/George Will argument that no real crime was committed and Fitzgerald couldn't indict on the IIPA statute BECAUSE Libby lied and obstructed justice.
Jesus Fucking Christ, how hard a concept is that to understand? Are the members of the American media so fucking stupid that they cannot grasp this idea or are they so easily manipulated by the Rovian spin that they just repeat GOP talking points ad nauseum and without compunction? Or are they just on the Armstrong Williams/Maggie Gallagher payroll?
Could these media people with the journalism degrees from Columbia and Berkeley do their fucking jobs and hold the people in power accountable instead of simply repeating the power elite's talking points like they're newsworthy and/or truthful?
