The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Kinsley's last paragraph:

• So as much as I dislike the war in Iraq, as much as I dislike President Bush, as much as I expect that I would dislike Mr. Libby if I ever met him, I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. In fact, if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, “Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously.” I bet that today, commuted sentence and all, Mr. Libby wishes they had done just that.

Kinsley would always rather say something clever and counterintuitive than repeat what someone else is saying, so his angle on this issue is to duck whether the commutation is right or wrong, or whether Libby should have been prosecuted or convicted, and instead to tell reporters that their views that leaking is sacrosanct are unreasonable. Getting the NYT to run it is the icing on the cake.

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Kinsley says about Scooter: "I feel that he should not have had to face a perjury trap: the choice between prison for lying, or prison for his role in a set of transactions that the press regards as not merely O.K. but sacrosanct. " If this means, gee, we guys in the Press shouldn't have asked him questions about classified information, your reading would make sense. But I read it as saying he shouldn't have been put in the "perjury trap" that was not a trap at all, of course, thanks to the 5th Amendment.

Seems to me he's no upset about the traitorous lying weasel getting off.

Can you say "Quid Pro Quo"
 

Do you know how much coke you have to have on you to get 25 years? Are you suggesting W carried a duffle bag full of pure granular cocaine?

Ty's candidate
 

The Democrats pushed the issue to the point that the GOP had to agree to Fitzy doing his thing. That was the beauty of the hit job, afterward, the Dems could offer exactly the defense you did here.

You don't think the Dems kept this non-story front and center for all those months where people were beginning to tire of it?

It was a perfect hit. No prints at all.

Can you say "Quid Pro Quo"
 

As you suggest, he must be failing to distinguish between cocaine and crack cocaine, for which the Sentencing Guidelines make enormous distinctions.

I doubt W did much crack in the early 1970s -- I don't think he was even drinking anymore by the time crack caught on.

S_A_M

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Now that... That is a really good argument. I didn't think of that, but it is an excellent hole in Kinsley's reasoning.

Why didn't Clinton do that as well?

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Is adultery or sodomy still a crime in DC?

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Politics.

How do you think it would go over to have a sitting president "take the 5th?" Wow. Boggles the mind.

S_A_M

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Might have been in Arkansas, where the alleged offense occurred -- but you're right it probably wasn't available.

S_A_M

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

My bad. I was thinking he'd previously testified that he didn;t have sex with Lewinsky. He only said that at a press conference.

I also still hold to the position that a blow job isn't sex, but I recognize I'm in very thin company there.

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

"Executive Priviliege" has been pretty synonymous with it since Nixon.

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

He's saying that the press shouldn't have taken his leaks in the first place. He's careful not to defend what Libby did once he was in the perjury trap.

Kinsley doesn't answer the questions that other pundits can answer. He thinks outside the box. Understood as a proposition for establishing a niche in the media marketplace, the man is brilliant. Maureen Dowd is just playing his game.

No, he's much too cerebral to get upset about much of anything, except perhaps stem-cell research.

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

The White House is in Arkansas?

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

Maybe. Are you suggesting that because he doesn't weigh in on the right or wrong of the thing as you'd like to see him everything else he offers somehow lacks creddibility?

Right or wrong in politics is entirely, well, partisan. I'd say his refusal to take that simple judgmental road gives his points added credibility.

Ty's candidate
 

Congratulations -- this is just about the stupidest thing anyone has ever said on this board (setting aside, of course, things said by people who were full of shit or on some kind of supervised release from an institutional setting). The GOP did not "have to agree" to any of this. The CIA -- not "the Democrats" -- was the agency that actually refered the matter to the DOJ. James Comey is the person who appointed Fitzpatrick, and there is no reason to think that anything any Democrat ever said or did contributed in any way to his decision.