Congress Disgraces Itself Yet Again, Part 2

It appears that the 110th Congress is hell-bent on making me reuse this title until I run out of numbers to place behind it. So be it and good luck with that. The Democrat leadership (and I use the word leadership in its loosest possible sense) have now defined themselves as a group with no agenda other than to get elected and obstruct progress, no new ideas, and no inclination or competence to do its own job (as opposed to the presidents job).

Who gives a damn what Valerie Plame has to say? The answer, apparently, is Henry Waxman. Take it offline and don’t spend my money to replay this. But since she has already testified and her testimony is in conflict with the CIA and State Department officials, will she be investigated and potentially prosecuted for perjury, or is she anti-Republican enough to get a pass?

The Democrats own guy, Patrick Fitzgerald, has already determined, early on in his investigation I might add, that there was no underlying crime to prosecute. The investigation should have stopped there, but it didn’t. The best he could do was to scapegoat Scooter Libby. Not good enough for the Democrat-controlled Congress.

So, having told us in the campaign leading up to the November elections that the Republicans have made a mess out of the United States, what do they do once they are in power. Let’s see:

• Try – and fail – to micromanage the war effort in Iraq,
• Try – and fail – to send a message to the president that would persuade him pull out of Iraq.
• Try – and succeed – to send a message to terrorists that all they have to do is wait us out and Iraq is theirs.
• Try – and succeed – to turn a routine realignment of U.S. Attorneys into an expensive investigation that will squander even more of my money for their own personal gain and scare some of the weak-kneed Republicans into abandoning their party and principles (Thanks for exposing them, incidentally.).
• Try – and will probably succeed – to resurrect the recently closed case on the CIA non-leak non-story wasting, yet again, even more of my money, but helping to promote a new book from a person who conspired to undermine the president, thus turning the House of Representatives into a daytime talk show with me footing the bill.

And all this after only less than 3 months in office. Pathetic! Why is Congress willing to surrender to terrorists, yet not give our legally elected President a chance to do his job? Why can’t Congress do its own job? I want my money back.

Speaking of surrendering, President Bush, why are you playing this stupid game with Congress? Why can you stand up to terrorists like the patriot that you are, but not stand up to Democrats’ babbling, irrelevant idiocy? Are they scarier than the terrorists? Why did you permit Alberto Gonzales to testify on a non-issue? What could their possibly have been to lie about? You are quickly becoming an enabler, dare I say a beltway insider. Sorry, but please stop it and keep your eye on the ball. Somebody has to, since those in the Legislative branch couldn’t even decide what the ball looks like even if they could find the right glasses to allow them to see it, much less find it to keep an eye on it - even if they cared, which they don't.

That’s the very sad view today here at the bottom.

Libby is less Guilty than Clinton

I could be wrong, but this is what it looks like here at the bottom.

Ever since Bill Clinton was impeached in December, 1998 we have been told so many times that it was all about sex that the Pavlovian among us have been trained to believe it. It wasn’t about sex. It was about rape (Juanita Broaddrick) and sexual harassment (Paula Jones) – crimes that people typically either go to jail for or lose their jobs over.

While it is true that the very narrow scope of Ken Starr’s investigation was the Monica Lewinski affair, there is no doubt that without the preceding and underlying scandals, it would not have reached the constitutional crisis stage. Nobody really wanted to impeach Clinton. He forced it. It was a political loser from the beginning for Republicans. If they had been successful in the impeachment proceedings, Al Gore would have been catapulted into the White House, and would have been reelected in 2000 on the sympathy vote. The analogy is locking up Al Capone for tax evasion instead of the many other more heinous crimes that was his true legacy.

In the Clinton case, there was, at least, an acknowledged crime committed. Even his supporters acknowledged that he lied about sex; they admitted that he lied. What else could he have done, after all? Well, for one thing, he could have told us that it was none of our business and refused to answer questions about it. Perjury is a crime. There was plenty of evidence to suggest that other, more serious crimes were committed – crimes like rape and sexual harassment.

Scooter Libby, on the other hand, may have lied or not. He may have honestly had a memory lapse or not. He may have been attempting to use delaying tactics to soften the blow when it was finally discovered that there was no underlying crime committed or not. Since there was no underlying crime, Libby had no reason to lie. There goes the motive. But apparently, Patrick Fitzgerald, a United States Attorney with a previously stellar reputation in my native Chicago, decided that in the national arena of anti-Bush politics, a motive is a minor annoyance – like lying about “sex.”

So let’s see. Clinton gets off (no pun intended, honestly) because he lied about sex, even though it was not all about sex. It was about rape and sexual harassment. Libby is put on trial because he may or may not have lied about NOTHING.

The Republicans are vilified about spending millions of our dollars to prosecute someone his supporters admitted committed the crime he was accused of. Democrats spend some number of dollars that the Republicans are too afraid to discover and tell us about to prosecute someone who, it appears, is probably not guilty of doing anything.

So, more time and money is wasted for the personal gain of politicians who feel the need to put on a show is a higher priority than doing the peoples work. Nice job, elected officials.