I was going to write about Bill Press and his echoing of the Republican talking points about Patrick Fitzgerald, but then this piece of garbage came up on my screen, and suddenly Bill didn't seem to be as big of a tool.
Ruth Marcus wrote in today's Washington Post that Gonzales didn't lie under oath. She writes a skillful dissembling of his testimony, and says that we don't need any more Clintonian debates about parsing of language.
Consequently, the calls by some Democrats for a special prosecutor to consider whether Gonzales committed perjury have more than a hint of maneuvering for political advantage. What else is to be gained by engaging in endless Clintonian debates about what the meaning of "program" is?
Take a jump for more....
This is about far more than the surveillance. This is about a pattern of lying, about the surveillance programs, about the U.S. attorney firings, about his "legal opinions" (quotes since I don't believe that Gonzales is a true lawyer) on Guantanamo and other parts of the War On Terra. Gonzales is incapable of telling the truth. He has patently lied in his testimony, and he is obstructing a legitimate Congressional investigation.
Marcus, like every other tool in the MSM, invokes Clinton as a reason not to impeach, appoint special counsels, or in general conduct any meaningful oversight. They inveigh against this as political advantage or theatre, conditioned by 12 years of Republican misuse or absence of oversight to think that Congress is nothing more than a body of hot air. Well, let me break this down into simple, easy terms that any fifth grader could understand.
Bill Clinton, much as we love the Big Dog, lied. He lied about his affairs to us, his family, and the courts. Was that bad? Absolutely. Impeachable? Absolutely not. His impeachment was Republican revenge and hubris at its peak, and it tarnished this sternest of Congressional tools so much that any attempt to conduct a legitimate impeachment is now invariably compared to Clinton and Monica, and then dismissed as political posturing.
What Bill Clinton did was lie about a private matter, something egregious, yes, but not even close to what the Founders imagined when they came up with impeachment as a tool for ridding us of an abusive leader. Clinton did not abuse the power of his office.
In contrast, the push by many of us, myself included, to impeach Bush and/or Gonzales is the product of a deep-seated belief, rooted in facts, that they have engaged in a massive desecration of the Executive Branch, exploited their constitutional powers, and undermined the very foundation of representative democracy. Gonzales has been the enabler of all these power grabs by the President, he has lied about it, and he continues to thumb his nose at the more powerful branch of our government, the Congress.
If Clinton could be impeached for perjury on such a low standard, how can Marcus come to the conclusion that Gonzales should not face such penalties? The only answer is that she, like her colleagues, is unable to distinguish theater (Clinton impeachment) from necessity (impeaching officials who are destroying the fabric of our nation). They continue to act like Arlen Specter: lots of shushing, no substantive action, because they are so concerned about not being liked instead of doing their jobs and telling the truth, not just the equivocated version that passes for it these days.