From the WSJ Opinion Archives
The
Libby Travesty
We won't gainsay the jury's verdict in the Scooter Libby trial--"guilty"
on four of five counts on perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation
of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. Life is too short to immerse oneself in the
tedious details of the case. (If you're interested in Libby minutiae, we recommend
Tom Maguire.)
But it remains a travesty that Libby was ever prosecuted to begin with.
This was a political show trial, and partisans of Joe Wilson will use the guilty verdict to declare vindication. But along the way we learned that virtually all the claims Wilson and his supporters made were false:
- On his trip to Niger, Wilson found no evidence that contradicted the famous
"16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address,
contrary to his New York Times op-ed claim.
- Plame, his wife, who worked for the CIA, did recommend him for the Niger
junket, contrary to Wilson's denials.
- Plame was not a covert agent under the definition of the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act, contrary to Wilson's insinuations, which many of his backers,
including in the press, presented as fact.
- No one from the White House "leaked" Plame's identity as a CIA functionary to Robert Novak, who received the information from Richard Armitage at the State Department.
Libby stands convicted of lying in the course of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the Valerie Plame kerfuffle--but that investigation was undertaken on the basis of a tissue of lies. When Fitzgerald began the case, in 2003, no one had committed any crime in connection with the kerfuffle, and that was fairly easy to ascertain, given that Plame was not a covert agent and Armitage had already owned up to the so-called leak. Fitzgerald looks like an overzealous prosecutor, one who was more interested in getting a scalp than in getting to the truth of the matter.
Of course, Libby could have avoided indictment and conviction if he had simply said "I don't remember" a lot more during the course of the investigation. Therein lies a lesson for witnesses in future such investigations--which may make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs when pursuing actual crimes.
Al Gore,
Nation Builder?
"Mark what Vice President Gore is not saying," opines Eli Lake in
the New York Sun:
As the rest of the Democratic field dares itself to embrace an American betrayal [of Iraq] at ever sooner deadlines, Mr. Gore barnstorms the country to raise the alarum about the weather. When asked about withdrawing troops from the war he urged his party to vote against in 2002, he dodges the question.
In an interview December 6 with Matthew Lauer, the former vice president was asked whether, were he president, he would favor a withdrawal. Mr. Gore made sure to say that the war was a "car-wreck" and that military victory was impossible. But as for whether he would cut and run, he said, "Well if I were president I would have the full flow of information and have and test each of these options."
Somehow in Gore's weaseling, Lake detects hawkishness:
So why is it that Hollywood's favorite Democrat would need more information to make a choice everyone in his party seems to have already accepted? Look no further than Mr. Gore's September 23, 2002, address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, a speech that launched his transformation from goofy Columbia professor to anti-war hero. In it he said that one of the reasons he opposed the intervention, was because he did not trust President Bush to stay in Iraq once the Baathist state was dismantled.
"If we go in there and dismantle them--and they deserve to be dismantled--but then we wash our hands of it and walk away and leave it in a situation of chaos, and say, 'That's for y'all to decide how to put things back together now,' that hurts us," Mr. Gore said. This, incidentally, is the inverse of how Senator Obama advertises today on the stump his early Iraq war opposition. Mr. Obama says today, "I believed that giving this President the open-ended authority to invade Iraq would lead to the open-ended occupation we find ourselves in today."
Gore's speech is available at the Commonwealth Club Web site, and the preamble to the quote Lake offers is even more interesting:
I vividly remember that during one of the campaign debates in 2000, Jim Lehrer asked then-Governor Bush whether or not America, after being involved with military action, should engage in any form of nation building. The answer was, "I don't think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. We're going to have kind of a nation-building corps in America? Absolutely not." My point is, this is a Bush doctrine. This is administration policy. Given that it is administration policy, we have to take that into account as a nation in looking at the likely consequences of an overwhelming American military victory against the government of Iraq. If we go in there and dismantle them . . .
Today it is Gore's fellow Democrats who want to pull out and leave the Iraqis to their own devices, as Gore feared--not without reason but wrongly, as it turned out--the Bush administration would do.
The question for Gore, though, is this: When he said this in 2002, was he speaking as an honest critic or as a mere partisan? If the former, this would be a good time for him to speak up again. The country could use an honest Democrat, respected on the left (sorry, Sen. Lieberman), to remind his party that America has a responsibility in Iraq, and that, whatever one thought about the war four or five years ago, running away now would be a moral, humanitarian and strategic disaster.
Is Al Gore that man? Eli Lake seems to think so. We're highly skeptical but would love to be proved wrong.
What
Would Jesus Sue?
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. This is from a Beliefnet.org interview
with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards:
What parts of American life do you think would most outrage Jesus?
Our selfishness. Our resort to war when it's not necessary. I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.
Why is it that the secular left sees a threat to the separation of church and state when conservative politicians cite religious bases for their views about abortion, same-sex marriage and the like, but not when liberal politicians speak on Jesus' behalf like Edwards does? We suppose it's either because the secular left is more left than secular, or because no one thinks guys like Edwards are sincere in their professions of religious faith.
In any case, Edwards, a filthy-rich trial lawyer, has a beam in his own eye when he complains about selfishness. As Carolina Journal reported in January:
Presidential candidate John Edwards and his family recently moved into what county tax officials say is the most valuable home in Orange County [N.C.]. The house, which includes a recreational building attached to the main living quarters, also is probably the largest in the county. . . .
The main house is all on one level except for a 600-square-foot bedroom and bath area above the guest garage.
We hope he's at least made the "guest garage" available for use by the local homeless!
Mrs.
Clinton in the Closet
From the Associated Press:
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York told the nation's leading gay rights group in an unpublicized speech that she wants a partnership with gays if elected president.
Clinton also said she opposes the "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays in the military that was instituted during her husband's presidency.
"I am proud to stand by your side," Clinton said in a keynote speech Friday to the Human Rights Campaign. Neither Clinton's campaign nor her Senate office made any announcement that she would be making the Friday address.
Asked twice at a Monday campaign stop in Iowa why she did not publicize her speech to the group, Clinton said: "You'll have to ask my campaign."
She may "oppose" don't-ask-don't-tell, but is sure sounds as though she knows how to practice it.
Global
Warming Strikes Again
"Penguins Poised to Leave Pittsburgh"--headline, CBC.ca, March 5
Stupid
Is as Stupid Does
"Key Lawmakers Complain of Weak Intelligence"--headline, Washington
Times, March 5
Good
Thing It Was Phony
"Phony Pipe Bomb Exploded in Northeast Charlotte"--headline, WSOC-TV
Web site (Charlotte, N.C.), March 5
Good
Thing She Wore a Suit
"Jury Clears Girl in Suit Over Bike-Skate Crash"--headline, Daily
Record (Morris County, N.J.), March 6
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Winters a Trial for Maine's Nudists"--headline, Boston
Globe, March 5
- "911 Calls Took the Usual Time, Police Say"--headline, Indianapolis
Star, March 6
- "European Economies Lag Behind the US, Study Says"--headline,
Deutsche
Welle Web site, March 6
- "Ernest Borgnine Stops in Athens"--headline, Decatur
(Ala.) Daily, March 6
- "More Reporters Embrace an Advocacy Role"--headline, USA Today, March 6
Form
Over Substance
Here's an amusing little dust-up from the Volunteer State. Blogger Bob Krumm,
who ran for state Senate last year, defends the incumbent who beat him, Douglas
Henry. A blogress who identifies herself only as "Rachel"
is unhappy because, when she sent an online
form letter to Henry opposing an antiabortion bill, she got "a pithy
talking points memo" in response, "one that does nothing to address
the legitimate concerns about this bill," which "is an insulting demonstration
of how unwilling certain Tennessee legislators are to appropriately respond
to constituents and engage in meaningful discussion."
Or, as Krumm puts it, "Rachel's complaint is that her form letter to State Senator Douglas Henry was answered with a . . . form letter."
Rachel, however, in an update to her post, says, "It doesn't bother me if Henry sent the same form letter to everyone writing to him on the bill. What bothers me is that his letter did not substantially respond to any of the legitimate concerns raised regarding this piece of legislation."
Rachel then refers her readers to the work of another anonymous blogress, "Aunt B.," who Rachel says "get[s] it exactly right." Aunt B defends the use of form letters on the ground that in Tennessee, "fifty-three percent of us are illiterate or barely literate":
I bring that up because, for anybody, dealing with someone who has a lot of power when you don't (say if you're a young woman and you want to write a letter to a long-time state senator) is daunting. You want to be sure that you get your point across and that you sound like a person whose ideas should be considered.
Form letters that can be altered to meet your needs are one way of achieving that.
Aunt B. is quick to note that "I'm not trying to insinuate that Rachel is not very literate." We'd actually go beyond this and say Rachel clearly is literate, although Aunt B. is a bit confused. After all, if you can't read, how can you avail yourself of a form letter?
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Dan O'Shea, Brent Silver, Paul Dyck, John Hartness, Rod Pennington, Mark Van Der Molen, John Sitilides, Ed Lasky, Kevin Kaufman, David Wheeler, Gary Turner, Daniel Foty, Keith Phillips, Alan Utter, Gary Phoenix, Paul Cashman, William Rhodehamel, John Eremic, Dori Monson and Samuel Walker. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Some Democrats want to organize airport screeners like postal workers.
- Brendan Miniter: For want of school choice, 16-year-old Rontrell Matthews works his way through high school.
- Joshua Muravchik: Did the epistolary novel inspire the idea of human rights?
