It's official: The far right has finally succeeded into turning our justice system into one big ol' massively overpriced game of Calvin Ball.
Judge Dismisses Plame Lawsuit
"The alleged tortious conduct, namely the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's status as a covert operative, was incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform," Bates wrote in an opinion released this afternoon.
"Incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform"? Am I hallucinating, or does this actually say "Cheney and Bush and company were hired to, among other things, rat out undercover intelligence operatives,"???
On what two-bit glue-huffing planet do these jagloads come from? It's not a crime for members of the Executive Branch to arbitrarily expose covert CIA operatives because it's part of what they were hired to do?? From the depths of whose ass was this load of bullshit pulled, anyway? Is this what we're now reduced to? Right-wing judges engaging in some sort of bizarre reverse omertà in order to help shield the president and his cronies from any sort of accountability for their actions?
It's their JOB... to break the law. It's what they were HIRED to do.
Now, where do I apply for a job like that?
"Let's see... well, Mr. 68, your supervisor has marked your annual review as "meets expectations." Room for improvement there, hmm? I think we really need to see you challenging yourself this next year to find some more serious laws to break."
"Jaywalking, smoking in public, parking in front of a fire hydrant... these are all valid laws to break, but wouldn't you say it's time to begin to cross-train on felonies? Not capital crimes just yet, necessarily, but maybe theft? Fraud, perhaps?"
"And don't be afraid to branch out in areas you're already familiar with. Instead of simply viewing kiddie porn, for instance, why not be proactive and MAKE some kiddie porn? You see? Of course you do. Cost-of-living raise. See you next year."
Call me oblivious, I guess I just never realized that we live in the small equatorial banana republic of Santa Arbusto.
This notion that the executive branch and their staff are somehow hired to do things such as blowing the cover of covert CIA operatives for the purposes of political revenge has got to be the single most asinine, ridiculous, and baseless fucking lie I've heard all week (that didn't come out of Tony Snow's mouth, anyway.) I swear, it's like this bunch and their hirelings are all just playing Calvin Ball 24/7.
Y'all remember Calvin Ball, right? From Calvin and Hobbes? It was the made-up sport that Calvin and his tiger Hobbes would play out in the backyard. It was a random combination of elements of just about any sport you might think of, with the game rules changing at little Calvin's whim (usually when Hobbes had just scored against him) and the only hard and fast rule being that you couldn't play the game the same way twice.
Sound familiar? Does it bring back echoes of, oh say, "The Vice President is not part of the Executive Branch (except when it benefits him to be)"?
So now we have a federal judge (the same one who dismissed the lawsuit over Dick Cheney’s energy task force records awhile back, by the way) who is apparently just making shit up to try and prevent anyone from holding Cheney and Bush et al accountable for any of the scams and flams they've been pulling for the past six years.
Now THAT'S one of the major perks of power... to have judges just inventing new rules out of the blue specifically to keep your ass out of a well-deserved sling! Wow!! That's even better than having lobbyists buy you hookers to swaddle you in diapers and play funny little scat games with you!
Of course, for all the rest of us it means that our justice system is hanging in even more finely-shredded tatters than the most jaded of us realized, but there it is. Let Us Eat Cake, I guess is the message here. One justice system for the power brokers, and a combination of mandatory minimums, a Mexican prison, and Judge fucking Judy for the rest of us.
Thank God those soldiers in Iraq are dying for our freedom, eh? That's like your parents still paying for a car they bought you that one of your dipshit friends then got shitfaced on Mickey's Big Mouths and Robitussin and wrapped six times around a tree THREE YEARS AGO!!
Just when I think this country can't look any more like a bunch of barnyard Elmers huddled around a three-card monte table at the county friggin' fair...