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.

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

I don't think he's gaming here and the suggestion the cerebral and the emotional/judgmental are mutually exclusive is a little broad brushed, wouldn't you say?

His point is a perfectly rational grey observation of a very grey event in an entirely grey arena.

Ty's candidate
 

You forgot drunk.

Ty's candidate
 

Spoken like a true lawyer who can't think outside of the box. Here's a tip, rule-and-reg-boy, POLITICS INFILTRATES EVERYTHING. If I have to explain further, or actually argue whether there was pressure brought to bear by Democrats to make this thing move forward, I am going to lose a lot of respect for you.

Stop reading the fucking narrow little rules and responding like this is a math problem.

Need I offer you the 8 million stories about the CIA's displeasure with Bush and Co since 2000? Are you dim enough to believe that no Democrat in power has the ear of anyone at the CIA and vice versa. Are you really as naive as the statement you just made or is your need to win every argument overtaking your common sense again?

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

No. I like to read his stuff because he's clever. But on issues that matter to people, he can be maddening, because he can seem oblivious to the aspects that matter because he's preoccupied with sounding clever. As I suggested, this doesn't happen when he writes about stem-cell research, no doubt because the issues hit home with him (he has Parkinson's).

I don't even know what this means, but it sounds stupid. Does anyone but a bunch of Cubans in south Florida think that our Cuban policy is the best course for us and for Cuba? No, and in my experience just about every non-Cuban Republican agrees. But because this same group of Cubans votes on this one issue and because they live in a swing state with a bunch of electoral votes, they get to run our Cuban policy.

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

I already said that I agree with his column. But he's not defending Libby, which you seem to have missed.

Ty's candidate
 

Ty's algebraic in his responses. A classic lawyer mind. His aim is to linearly try to use bits of evidence he's amassed from internet sources to disprove the obvious.

Now, wait for his waterfall of blog sources supporting the notion the Dems had nothing to to with the Plame investigation. He'll find some nitwit who'll actually suggest they just sat on their hands and did nothing, and the thing just steamrolled forward under the power of the American Public's massive interest in it.

It's still barely a story of interest outside the realm of people like us, and people who think Graydon Carter is a swell political commentator.

Wait... wait... I think I hear Ty putting together his little first year law student's rebuttal. Oooooh, here we go... Moot Court! Yay!

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

Uh, no. I said he's being opaque on that issue for good reason. You and I agree that Kinsley is not defending Libby.

You and I split on the issue of the Dems involvement in this thing. You should think twice before you throw "stupid" around. You forget I occasionally have moments of lucidity.

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

"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."


That reads not only as an indictment of the press for their role, but as an exoneration of Libby. It shifts blame away from Libby to the press.

Ty's candidate
 

You're like a Marxist in your capacity to eliminate complexity and detail in order to reduce things to a simple, deterministic world view. I was wondering whether you would respond with anything about what actually happens, but I'm not surprised that you didn't.

We all know about issues between Bush and the CIA since 2000. This doesn't mean that the CIA is controlled by or answering to Democrats. They have other reasons to be pissed, one of which is that the White House ruined the career of one of their people to score political points. That has everything to do with the CIA's institutional interests, and nothing to do with whatever you mean by "Democrats in power" -- there weren't any in Washington at the time we're talking about, a fact that either eludes you or is too inconvenient for your "it's all politics, all the time" worldview.

Which Democrats told the CIA to do something it didn't want to do anyway? What was their leverage? You had Republican congressional leadership that wasn't letting House Democrats hold meetings in conference rooms, so I'm curious about the "power" you have in mind. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee was Jay Rockefeller, who since 2000 gladly let himself get rolled on just about every occasion where it was possible, and some where it probably wasn't but he did it anyway. What "power" did he exert over the CIA.

And then there's DOJ. Tell me about the supernatural political powers possessed by Democrats that let them force John Ashcroft's DOJ to open an investigation, and then to get him to recuse himself, and then to get Fitzpatrick to get appointed by James Comey.

Did you even know who James Comey was? Or is your commitment to the idea that it's all political so profound that you can just repeat that mantra without knowing much of anything about what actually happened.

Fitzpatrick then got Republican-appointed judges to preside over a jury trial -- the unanimous jurors who voted to convict were clearly the pawns of unnamed but resourceful Democratic politicians who bent their feeble minds to the interests of the Democratic party, as we all know that only a partisan could look at evidence and decide that it shows anything beyond a reasonable doubt, right? -- and to affirm the conviction. Never mind that these judges had the sort of connections and careers that got them appointed to the bench by Republican presidents, and never mind Article III, which gives them life tenure -- you just know that these judges, too, were acting because of some sort of pressure from Democratic politicians. Do tell.

At other times, you are happy to post here about how useless and hapless the Democratic Party is, a party which didn't do much else to control the actions of the Bush Administration over the last several years. Yet here they had amazing powers.

eta: Sorry, no blog posts or evidence -- I figured you would more appreciate whatever rhetorical flair I could muster.

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

I guess I read it differently. It certainly shifts the focus away from Libby to the press, and in a context in which others are complaining about commutation the effect is as you describe. But I've read Kinsley enough to think that he was being careful not to express an opinion exonerating Libby.

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

Prosecutors tend not to immunize their prime target.

Ty's candidate
 

This pales beside Hank's Clinton "hit list," which I'm just not sure he's joking about any more.

Ty's candidate
 

I think what Sebby meant was the Dems and its press created this reality where the WH was behaving so badly overall, and then on this out 'ole no tits, that prosecutions had to happen, and once started a patsy had to be found.

Ty's candidate
 

If anyone's going to hold hyperbole against me, it's not going to be sebby.

Ty's candidate
 

you mean the page that seemed to blame Hillary for 9/11? ummm, that was meant as a joke. Only Ty ventures that far (in the opposite direction of course) from sanity in his beliefs.

Sebby, meet Alan Dershowitz -- he's got your back.

Here's a post by Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy:

Bush and his Terrorist Friends
 

Interesting. What do they think Sadr's agenda is?

If you can, follow the links back to Dershowitz's article and look at the comments page. He gets called to the carpet by his readers.

Fantasy Island
 

Here we go again...

Fantasy Island
 

Slave, if I admit that Fitzpatrick may have made the right decision in declining to bring criminal charges against Libby for the leaking, will you admit that Libby misused classified information in a way that violates "the law" -- statute, regulations, etc. -- even if that violation didn't form the predicate for a criminal offense? (If not, is it because you don't know key law or facts?)

The Price is Wrong
 

You cannot make stuff like this up:
---

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa, July 4 — As thousands of people cheered along the Fourth of July parade route here, it was the tall man with the familiar white hair who made the crowd go truly gaga.

“Bob Barker! It’s Bob Barker!” two women shrieked upon seeing the former president, Bill Clinton, in the distance, as he and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York marched hand-in-hand.

When the women realized who it really was, they seemed just as thrilled, shouting, “Ohhhh!” and clapping madly.

Fantasy Island
 

I assume you put the word law in scare quotes because of not what the law actually is, but what the law - according to you - should be?

Fantasy Island
 

No -- there actually are statutes, regulations and other sources of law that pertain to these things and that say you don't disclose state secrets. Whether or not disclosure is a criminal offense is another question. Sorry if my poor punctuation obscured that point.

This Is Horrible
 

As linked on Drudge:

• Pool Drain Pulls Small Intestine Out Of Young Girl
  
  Heather Brown
  Reporting
  
  (WCCO) Minneapolis A 6-year-old Edina, Minn. girl has been hospitalized after a horrific accident at a swimming pool.
  
  Abigail Taylor was severely injured Friday when she sat over an open drain hole in a wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club.
  
  Now Abigail's father has a warning to other families: Pool and hot tub drain accidents are a hidden danger that many of us don't understand.
  
  Abigail has big brown eyes, a dazzling smile and at just 6 years old she has already competed in local swim meets.
  
  "She loves to swim," said her father Scott Taylor.
  
  Her love of swimming is why her family didn't think twice when she played at a kiddie pool at the family's golf club on Friday night.
  
  Taylor said as Abigail was getting out of the pool, she fell.
  
  "She more or less blacked out, she passed out, fell face-first onto the pool decking," he said. The family thought it was a seizure.
  
  An ambulance rushed her to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Several hours later a surgeon said Abigail was lucky to be alive.
  
  "The suction had caused a two-inch tear in her rectum and had basically disemboweled her by pulling out her small intestines, almost all of it," said Taylor.
  
  Her father said a search of the pool filter turned up Abigail's intestine. He said Abigail was seriously wounded because the cover of the drain had been removed.
  
  In most public pools the drain cover is screwed in and cannot be pulled off. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the pressure on some pool drains can be as strong as 300 pounds per square inch.
  
  "It never even crosses anybody's mind that potential at the bottom of that pool is enough force to literally disembowel a child, an adult," said Taylor.
  
  Abigail will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life and will have to have a colostomy bag.
  
  "We view it as a miracle that she's still with us," her father said.
  
  She is improving. Wednesday morning she stunned her family by asking a question.
  
  "She said, 'Am I going to be on the news?' She said, 'Why do you ask?' She said, 'Because I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else,'" recalled Taylor.
  
  Since 1990, 170 people, mostly children, have been caught in drains and 27 of them have died. Legislation is pending that would require pools and hot tubs to have multiple drains to ease the suction.
  
  Some pools have a safety vacuum cutoff which shuts down if someone is trapped. New drain covers which cost less than $50 can also help.
  
  According to the Associated Press, an official at the golf club expressed sympathy for the family and said he didn't think anything was wrong with the pool, but referred questions to the club's attorney, who declined to comment.

http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_185085504.html

If ever there was a need for trial lawyers, it would be to address cases like this.

The more impressive part was that he was able to hit 100mph on the 405 in any car, much less a Prius. When did he get stopped? 2am?

ETA: Shit, I should read more closely. Matter of fact, it was 2am.

Green, indeed. Like a 10,000 square foot green house.

Ty's candidate
 

In order (skipping your "Marxist" intro):

1. I didn't say "controlled." You said controlled. I said some Dems put pressure on the right people holding the right levers. You're trying to make my allegation broader to attempt to paint it as absurd. The CIA's interests and the Dems' interests dovetailed here. That does not mean the Dems were not pulling strings. Your bizarre argument that no Democrats had any power in the run up to the Iraq War is amazing. What do you think? that when the GOP has a majority, the Dems are all locked in a cage in the Capitol basement? You think they suddenly lose all the sway they had, all the favors they're owed and all the connections they've built? And you're calling me simplistic?

2. Do you think that the parliamentary rules, and the committees people like Rockefeller head are the only instruments of power in DC? Do you think the bigger decisions are made in committees, with minutes kept? You know litigation, right? Ever called a clerk and gotten a favor? Ever gotten a trial bumped by dealing with a Federal Magistrate you'd been before a couple of times and knew liked you? Imagine that sort of soft gladhanding at 100X the "chumminess" level. We're talking about a city where Abramoff made $30 million lobbying in two years and basically owned congressmen. You rail against the GOP mightily. Why on earth would you think the Dems operate any differently? You and I will NEVER know exactly what favors were called in and what levers were pulled by the Dems, or which dems did it, to take this non-issue and balloon it into a controversy. But to suggest they weren't is just plain silly.

3-5. Disingenuous arguments all. Once the investigatory and prosecutorial mechanisms were operating and the press had its claws into the story, I agree with you, the political games ended.

Here, in plain English:

The Dems' "hit" here wasn't forcing the judges or prosecutors to convict Libby. It was getting the investigation and prosecution of such a non-issue started in the first place.

You're clonflating those very different acts to try to make my position look absurd because you know damn well the Democrats were working behind the scenes to force this to an investigation and prosecution.

6. Again, you're conflating two things in a flaccid attempt at a rhetorical haymaker. That I call the Dems politically hapless in their poor choice of candidates (Hillary) and backward political views doesn't at all equate to an indictment of their ability to work the political machine in DC. My prime criticism of the Dems is their love of, and exploitation of, the political system. The Libby "hit" was masterful. It's a classic Dem move. I've always given them credit for that type of thing. But you knew that.

Your rhetorical flair I like a lot more.

This Is Horrible
 

or a good fiction writer. http://www.ecrivains.org/IMG/pdf/Gut..._Palahniuk.pdf

Ty's candidate
 

No Democrat in Washington -- or anywhere else -- had enough pressure, or a lever long enough, or a string tied in the right place, or enough favors, to get the John Ashcroft-led DOJ to investigate senior members of the White House staff, such as Dick Cheney's chief of staff.