Remember last October when Kay Bailey Hutchison (my senator)said on
Meet the Press that she hopes any indictments coming out of Fitzgerald's office aren't based on "some perjury technicality"?
SEN. HUTCHISON [to Tim Russert]: ...I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality...
where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury...
MR. RUSSERT: But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.
SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. [No there weren't.] And I'm not saying that those are not crimes. They are. But I also think that we are seeing in the judicial process--and look at Martha Stewart, for instance, where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime. I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country. And I think we have to weigh both sides of this issue very carefully and not just jump to conclusions, because someone is in the public arena, that they are guilty without being able to put their case forward. I really object to that.
Meet the Press
Well who wouldn't object to a guilty conviction without a trial? Not me. Is it even possible? Here's my e-mail to Senator Hutchison's office:
Sent 10/23/05
To the operative opening Senator Hutchison's mail:
Would you please ask her how it is that when republicans lie, though the lie damages our national security, their perjury is a "technicality"; and when Bill Clinton lied about his sex life, certainly not a matter of national anything, it was an impeachable offense.
And would you please use the ten seconds it would take you to send me your meaningless computer-generated reply and to close your eyes and truly consider what you're doing to this country.
They didn't close their eyes and truly consider anything. They sent me a meaningless, computer-generated reply THOUGH I ASKED THEM NOT TO! Jeesh! Here it is:
Dear Friend:
Thank you for contacting me regarding my recent statement on "Meet the Press." I welcome your thoughts and comments on this issue.
On the October 23rd edition of "Meet the Press," I intended to express my general concern about investigators who fail to find evidence of a crime and instead look for inconsistencies, no matter how inadvertent, in testimony that may have changed over a period of years. I did not refer to a specific case. [That's not how I, nor anybody else with a 6th-grade education reads the word-for-word transcript, Senator.]
I believe that prosecutors play a critically important role in our system of justice, and to keep the integrity of the process, they must differentiate between a deliberate lie and an unintended mistake. Perjury is wrong. Deliberately lying to a grand jury is different from forgetting a name or a date in time.
I appreciate hearing from you and hope you will not hesitate to keep in touch on any issue of concern to you.
Sincerely,
Kay Bailey Hutchison
There. I made a diary--and mostly original stuff, too.