I must run but wanted to weigh in on Libby's indictment.
Bottom line....Libby lied (allegedly)
Incredibly stupid, no real crime................but he lied (allegedly). You can't lie to the Feds. Why such a smart guy would do something so stupid is beyond me.
BAH DA BING
Helllllllllllllllooooooo
Martha.
Watched the whole thing.......
Fitzgerald took every question. Totally apolitical. Press tried to grill him but they couldn't touch him.
Made the thumbsuckers look plain silly.
Prosecutor Fitzgerald is a straight guy. Smart, honest.
A good man.
But remember no crime was committed. There was no outing, Plame was not covert. This is the strangest part.
A good man, a great public servant, destroyed.
End of story.
UPDATE : Two quick thoughts on the matter:
Obstruction for What?
A charge of lying about a crime that wasn't
committed.
Where is the indictment on Sandy Berger? Stealing highly classified documetns from the National Archives, stuffing them in your dirty underwear and then destroying them?
Someone explain.........
Update: From reader JAH
Here is an interesting quote from an article in the Washburn Law Journal about materiality in obstruction cases. I think Fitzy is aware of this, and threw in the other charges against Libby for window dressing. I would, if I were the defense attorney here, have a motion to dismiss filed by Monday. "It is difficult to say whether the results in the Martha Stewart and Arthur Andersen, LLPtrials would be the same if the juries in the cases had received materiality instructions for the obstruction counts. It is quite possible that the juries might have found that the statementgiven by Martha Stewart was in fact material to the Securities Exchange Commission investigation and that the documents destroyed in the Andersen case were crucial to the prosecution of the underlying conduct that was the subject of the investigation.What is important is that the juries in these two cases did not have that opportunity. Instead, prosecutors proceeded with obstruction charges that allowed them to obtain convictions without the need to further investigate or prosecute the underlying conduct that they were originally pursuing. Unlike some cases, where obstruction is one of several charges that can be pursued, in these two cases, the only crimes brought by the government pertained to 'cover-up conduct' as opposed to the substantive crimes. One has to wonder if we are sacrificing important judicial values for efficiency." (Emphasis added).I would suggest to you that the very reason Fitzy is keeping this investigation "open" is to keep people from daring to make the exact argument presented above. We KNOW that what Libby said was clearly immaterial to this investigation, because THERE WAS NO UNDERLYING CRIME.Screw this guy. Another definition of a "prosecutor" is a person who expects you to conform to a standard of conduct they themselves have never observed. By the way, who was it who "obstructed justice" by repeatedly leaking grand jury testimony in this case? Fitzy, maybe?
Bottom line:
Here is how shallow Plame's cover was:
1) She is listed in Who's
who as Joe Wilson's wife.
2) She made a $1000 donation to Gore in 2000 in
her own name.
3) In the donation she gave the name of her alleged
employer and its address.
4) The employer has no physical presence
at the address. It consists only of a phone and a P.O. box.
5) She
went to work at CIA headquarters every day.
Anyone who tried to find out anything about her would quickly see that something was amiss. They might not have known what.
I am not trying to excuse anyone who treated government secrets lightly, but people ought to keep it in perspective. [amen Judith at Keshertalk]
