Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Here's my reply: Marc Rich. Were you as angry then?

For the record, I was furious.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
For the record, I was furious.

of course. the Supreme Ct. had just cheated you out of the election.

[bigswingingdickcheney]

Originally posted by fair and balanced
Al Gore's son was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities said.

Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over at about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

The deputies said they smelled marijuana and searched the car, Amormino said. They found less than an ounce of marijuana along with Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall, which is used for attention deficit disorder, he said.

"He does not have a prescription for any of those drugs," Amormino said.

Gore was being held in the men's central jail in Santa Ana on $20,000 bail.

The son of the former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee also was pulled over and arrested for pot possession in December 2003, in Bethesda, Md., while he was a student at Harvard University.



Of course, the rotten apple doesn't fall far from the tree:

Wow!

breaking update is that Al Gore's son was released from the Orange County Jail at 2 p.m. today, after a young man and woman posted his $20,000 bail in cash, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

I guess Edwards was right, "Two Americas", indeed!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

So, for the first time since about a couple weeks after boots hit Afghan soil, all of my relatives who are or were in the military are back home. This led to some interesting discussion around July 4 when the family got together.

The officers were uniformly livid about how many times Bush and Co. talk about al-Qaeda; they are firmly convinced that we are turning local disputes into international ones and building up al-Qaeda; folks like al Sadr apparently have many times the resources of al Qaeda and are potentially much more dangerous, but because we've built up al-Q as the big guys we're afraid of, many smaller groups are driven to allign with al-Q because it helps with recruiting and gets them some more resources. Apparently the army avoids any mention of al-Q in Iraq, and the biggest difficulty is that Bush, Cheney, Condi and others posing for the American media market insist on talking about al-Q in their speaches and press releases.

They're also all convinced that al-Sadr will eventually govern in all or most of Iraq (even including Kurdistan), and that Bush knows this and just wants it to happen on someone else's watch, so right now they feel like they're just playing for time and potentially making the situation worse.

The discussion included relatively high ranking officers - mostly Democrats but there was no argument on these points from the one brother-in-law who is a vocal R or from the guy who's a registered independent and swing voter.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
That's crazy. If Spy 1 sells secrets to the Chinese and gets caught, can he get out of trouble by proving that Spy 2 had earlier sold the same secrets to the Russians? Of course not.



Slave was saying that on the basis of facts that Fitzpatrick later contradicted in court filings. For example, he seemed pretty sure that Plame wasn't under cover, but Fitz and the CIA said otherwise. And the fact that Fitz did not bring charges does not mean that no law was broken.



I don't have a problem with the sentence he got. I have a problem with Bush commuting the sentence, less because I care about Libby doing time and more because I'm disgusted by the way that this administration puts itself above the law.

Blah blah blah... Read your boy Kinsley's Oped in the NYTimes this morning. He nails the Libby/Clinton debacles perfectly. For once, he has my proxy on an issue.

Actually, it's not "my" anything. It's just common sense. And anyone who disagrees with Kinsley is clearly letting his partisan sympathies overcome his rational brain.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
So, in your world, the Democrat-controlled CIA got upset that the White House outed one of its spies, and connived with the Democrat-controlled Department of Justice to have a Democrat-appointed prosecutor go after Scooter Libby, and he was successful only because he drew a judge appointed by a Democrat, whose ruling was then affirmed by an appellate court with two Democrat-appointed judges.

This is such a flailing wild pitch, and such a naked attempt to change the focus of the debate, that I'd swear I wrote it.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Blah blah blah... Read your boy Kinsley's Oped in the NYTimes this morning. He nails the Libby/Clinton debacles perfectly. For once, he has my proxy on an issue.

Actually, it's not "my" anything. It's just common sense. And anyone who disagrees with Kinsley is clearly letting his partisan sympathies overcome his rational brain.

I like that Kinsley's piece, for good measure, criticizes the institution that published his own article.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Whatever. There are thousands of slimebags sitting in jail right now that deserve a walk more than Scooter Libby does.

I should have known that a man that gave George Tenet a Presidential Medal of Freedom for intelligence work leading up to Iraq would also give a walk to Libby. Accountability for fuck ups--especially for fuck ups having to do with this god awful war--isn't really the calling card of this administration.

The first statement is true. Libby is a unique case which happens to be a political football. Others are not. That's a cruel reality, but not a point for this debate. You could apply that argument to just about every sentencing in the country on any given day.

The second point confounds me. I see the sense in giving Libby a pass, for the same reasons I felt Clinton should not have been impeached and Henry Hyde and Ken Starr should have been prosecuted for abuse of process when they wasted $50 million in tax dollars on that senseless witch hunt. I see no sense at all in giving George Tenet anything but a foot on the ass as he left the office. He was a whore who played along and then afterward tried to rehab himself by crying "I was pushed into it!" At least Kissinger had the balls to take his war criminal status with a laugh and tell his detractors to fuck themselves. And McNamara has since admitted his errors (Fog of War is a brilliant movie).

Tenet was a fucking simp. They ought to heat his medal to 400 degrees and brand his forehead with it, so he can spend the rest of his days ambling Georgetown with the Scarlet Letter his kind deserve.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I like that Kinsley's piece, for good measure, criticizes the institution that published his own article.

Well, that's the Pink Elephant in the corner of this whole mess. That institution I would say aided in killing 3000 US soldiers and 100,000 Iraqis just so it could gin up its advertising dollars.

I may take up arms if that Australian tabloid pimp gets his hands on the Journal. The Times is a shitrag now and as a lifelong reader it makes me pretty sad. The Journal's the last decent paper left, even if the Opeds sometimes practice a whole lotta suspension of disbelief.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The first statement is true. Libby is a unique case which happens to be a political football. Others are not. That's a cruel reality, but not a point for this debate. You could apply that argument to just about every sentencing in the country on any given day.

I think it's a bit different than this - Libby has bargaining power, because if he plays ball with Fitzy who knows who might go down.

Where, the 20-somethings getting 25 years for quanities of coke no greater than George W once carried while wandering the streets of New Haven have no bargaining power. Perhaps if they'd just hung out a bit more with the twins they'd know something of value.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Blah blah blah... Read your boy Kinsley's Oped in the NYTimes this morning. He nails the Libby/Clinton debacles perfectly. For once, he has my proxy on an issue.

Actually, it's not "my" anything. It's just common sense. And anyone who disagrees with Kinsley is clearly letting his partisan sympathies overcome his rational brain.

I agree almost entirely with Kinsley, whose op-ed is here. I don't understand why you think it's a rejoinder to anything I've said. His point is that newspapers should not have been complicit in spreading Libby's leaks. I agree. The mainstream press was shameful.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
This is such a flailing wild pitch, and such a naked attempt to change the focus of the debate, that I'd swear I wrote it.

You did say (IIRC) that Libby's prosecution was political, which is absurd. There wasn't a Democrat involved anywhere in the process. At every stage, you had Republican appointees making the decisions. Indeed, the thing was depoliticized by the fact that various political appointees -- Ashcroft, most notably -- had to recuse themselves, letting Fitzpatrick do his job as he saw fit.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I agree almost entirely with Kinsley, whose op-ed is here. I don't understand why you think it's a rejoinder to anything I've said. His point is that newspapers should not have been complicit in spreading Libby's leaks. I agree. The mainstream press was shameful.

Wait a minute. Kinsley says there is something vague about whether or not outing a CIA agent is breaking the law, and then seems to piece together an analogy that basically says because the Press views the freedom to publish leaks as sacrosanct, there out to be a freedom to leak on the other side, and that putting Libby in a bind where he either had to confess involvement in a (potential crime) or perjure himself was improper.

First, this is crap logic. Second, there is something called the fifth amendment that is basically a get-out-of-jail free card for those caught in a perjury trap. Invoke it, and the prosecutor inevitably offers you immunity so you can tell the truth. There was no trap for dear old Scooter - just a choice between telling the truth about his little cabal who were busily outing a CIA agent for political gain or breaking the law yet again. He chose to break the law yet again.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Blah blah blah... Read your boy Kinsley's Oped in the NYTimes this morning. He nails the Libby/Clinton debacles perfectly. For once, he has my proxy on an issue.

I was with him until the last paragraph, which seems to say something like, "He shouldn't have had to face the perjury trap because the press thought what he was doing was okay at the time." Since when are these things decided by what the press thinks is cool? Arrogant conclusion, if you ask me.

eta: Plus, what Greedy said.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Wait a minute. Kinsley says there is something vague about whether or not outing a CIA agent is breaking the law, and then seems to piece together an analogy that basically says because the Press views the freedom to publish leaks as sacrosanct, there out to be a freedom to leak on the other side, and that putting Libby in a bind where he either had to confess involvement in a (potential crime) or perjure himself was improper.

First, this is crap logic.

That would be crap logic. I don't think he says that Libby should have been lying. I think he's calling the newspaper (esp. the Times) on their hypocrisy in printing Libby's leaks, refusing to testify about their involvement, and then calling for his prosecution. If they hadn't cooperated with him at the outset, he wouldn't have found himself in the perjury trap. That doesn't mean it was OK for him to lie.