Yesterday's episode of Hardball was actually really fascinating. I'm surprised that it hasn't been diaried, if it has let me know.
For most of the show, Chris spoke with Libby juror #10, the smart and engaging Ann Redington, whom he kept carrying over into further segments because he liked her so much. Her statement that she'd like to see Libby pardoned because she feels sympathy for him (despite having no doubts about his guilt) seems to be MSNBC's take away news byte from the show (see MSNBC-TV homepage) but the best part for me was when Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor for The National Review, came on with Ms. Redington and called for a pardon for an entirely different reason. And Chris didn't let her get away with anything.
Join me over the flip...
Chris was antagonistic toward Kate O'Beirne from moment one:
MATTHEWS: Kate O‘Beirne, what do you think should happen to Scooter Libby now that he was convicted?
KATE O‘BEIRNE: Well, The National Review said yesterday editorially we think the president ought to pardon Scooter Libby.
MATTHEWS: What is this, democratic centralism? Is this the Communist Party? Do you have to speak their line? That is their editorial business. You are a journalist.
Nice, calling her out immediately for just parroting party line. He backed off once she insisted:
O‘BEIRNE: No. I totally agree with their line.
And why is that, Kate?
O‘BEIRNE: Because the entire affair was a political fight over Iraq that should never have been criminalized...[snip]...We argued the case should never have been referred to justice by the CIA as a criminal referral. They knew the underlining statute hadn‘t been broken. We think that referral was more about infighting over intelligence.
Now, this is where Chris and Kate got into a little fight about the definition of covert and whether or not outing Valerie Plame was criminal, which culminated in this beautiful smackdown by Matthews:
MATTHEWS: You know what I think is amazing? These conservatives in this country, and not that they are always wrong or always right, because the liberals are neither, it was all right to impeach Bill Clinton for perjury in a civil matter, it is all right to kick him out of office, as most Republican senators and most Republican members of Congress did, to kick him out of the presidency after he had been elected twice, over the matter of perjury.
Now all of a sudden Scooter Libby is going to get a gift-wrapped and sent home, having committed the same crime and been found guilty of it in a court. Where is your consistency here?
And what is O'Beirne's response to this?
O‘BEIRNE: Perjury should be punished. Bill Clinton admitted his perjury. He said—he plead guilty to it. I told falsehoods in my testimony, he admitted it.
MATTHEWS: Scooter was found guilty by a judgment of his peers.
O‘BEIRNE: Scooter Libby has not. Scooter Libby maintains that the discrepancies were owing to his faulty memory.
Umm, Okaaay. Don't worry, Chris didn't let this go.
MATTHEWS: Should Bill Clinton have been impeached for perjury?
O‘BEIRNE: Yes, which he...
MATTHEWS: Should he have been kicked out of the White House—the presidency for perjury?
O‘BEIRNE: Yes. It‘s an impeachable offense, Chris.
MATTHEWS: He should be kicked out of the presidency for perjury, but Scooter ought to get a—what, a hall slip or permission slip? What do you want to give him?
O‘BEIRNE: If you‘re guilty of perjury...and as I said, he‘s a—he—he admits his perjury. It‘s an impeachable offense.
MATTHEWS: Scooter was just found guilty in a court of perjury.
O‘BEIRNE: He maintains—he maintains...
MATTHEWS: I don‘t care what he maintains. Of course—this country is filled with prisons, with maybe a million people in these prisons, and every one of them says they‘re innocent!...[snip]...they claim they‘re innocent, like Scooter does. It doesn‘t mean anything to say you‘re innocent.
O‘BEIRNE: And sometimes it has been an injustice...
MATTHEWS: Sometimes.
O‘BEIRNE: ... and the pardon power can correct it.
OK, so you know when Chris gets on one of those rolls where he'd determined to paint someone into a corner to admit something they'd probably prefer not to admit? Well, that's just what Chris did with O'Beirne. Chris simply took O'Beirne's statements to their logical conclusion. Kate can't merely think Libby should be pardoned because he hasn't admitted perjury, she must believe that he in fact DID NOT LIE and to believe that she must believe Libby's defense...that he couldn't recall. Which for Chris is an absurd notion.
MATTHEWS: You believe he forgot?
O‘BEIRNE: I believe reasonable people can conclude it was a mistake.
MATTHEWS: Do you believe he forgot all of those incidents in which he demonstrated a knowledge of Valerie Plame‘s CIA identity, he forgot all of that? ...[snip]... Do you, Kate O‘Beirne, believe that Scooter Libby forgot that he knew about Valerie Plame and somehow remembered he got it from Tim Russert? Do you believe that?
O‘BEIRNE: I believe that that could be the case.
MATTHEWS: That can be the case?
O‘BEIRNE: Yes, I do.
MATTHEWS: That is not believing it.
O‘BEIRNE: I do—OK, I believe it.
Haha. Now that was satisfying.
Her entire reasoning behind why it's not inconsistent for conservatives to call for Libby's pardon having called for Clinton's impeachment comes down to the notion that it's possible that Libby actually wasn't lying, that he simply forgot...the verdict of a jury of his peers be damned.
Now, this is key because inherent in her reasoning is the assertion of Libby's innocence, which, as Chris points out to her next, is contrary to the precedent of presidential pardons as established by Ford.
O‘BEIRNE: I think a great injustice—I think the justice system was abused over a big political fight.
MATTHEWS: OK. You believe that if he accepts a pardon, he is accepting guilt? Because that is the legal precedent that Jerry Ford honored when he pardoned Richard Nixon. Do you believe that he should accept guilt, which you don‘t accept? You say he is innocent.
O‘BEIRNE: He doesn‘t have to accept guilt by accepting a pardon. He doesn‘t have to do that.
MATTHEWS: Well, that is the law.
O‘BEIRNE: That was the deal with Nixon. He doesn‘t have to do that.
MATTHEWS: That was the deal. Gerald Ford, to the day he died, God rest his soul, carried in his pocket the verdict decision, which said to accept a pardon is to accept guilt. He always carried it with him. And I can read it to you now if you want, the verdict decision.
O‘BEIRNE: Did Caspar Weinberger?
MATTHEWS: "The question in this case is the effect of the unaccepted pardon. It carries the imputation of guilt. Acceptance is a confession of guilt." That is the law. Now, you may have your own reading of the law, like you have your own reading of this case.
Chris continued...
MATTHEWS: I go back to the law. "It‘s an act of grace which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed." You‘re saying a pardon is something else. You‘re calling a pardon expungement. A pardon is not expungement. It doesn‘t deny the crime or the finding of a jury. It simply says he is relieved of the punishment. That‘s what a pardon is. You‘ve got this sort of sacramental notion of a pardon.
And what does Kate have to say in response to that?
O‘BEIRNE: I‘ll look it up. I‘ll bring that—I‘ll copy that and read it.
Damn right you will. Oh wait, Chris isn't done...
MATTHEWS: Well, I‘ll read it to you again. Do you really think pardon means, like, he didn‘t do anything wrong, he should have never been tried, he should have never been convicted, he‘s a great guy, this was all terrible? That‘s what you consider a pardon. And you say a pardon is, Well, give it to him because he doesn‘t really—he shouldn‘t go to prison because that‘d be awful.
This is why I record Hardball every day folks. Yes it can be maddening at times, but honestly, no one else confronts hypocrisy like Chris Matthews does. Thanks, Chris, for seeing through right wing calls for the pardon of Scooter Libby for what they are: hypocritical ideology.
But then again, I suppose putting the words "right wing" and "hypocritical ideology" in the same sentence is redundant.
My bad.