While lying to a grand jury is serious the main elements of this case seem to amount to literally nothing. But what is one of the more reasonable liberal bloggers, Kevin Drum, writing? Sounds alot like many Republicans back when there was the Whitewater-Clinton-Lewinski scandal. This shows that the Liberals/Left is fitting in perfectly with Megan McArdle’s theory of political parties.
Jane’s Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.
As exhibit A we have this,
“Mr. Libby’s story that he was at the end of a chain of phone calls was not true. It was false. He was at the beginning of a chain of phone calls” that disclosed Plame’s identity. He lied repeatedly about this under oath.
Now, the quoted portions come from Patrick Fitzgerald from his press conference, but note that the quotations end at “…that disclosed Plame’s identity.” And in a later post Kevin writes,
Libby could have told the truth, but then he would have had to admit his role in outing a CIA agent in order to score political points against a critic of the administration. He didn’t want that campaign to become public, so he invented a cover story, repeated it under oath, and stuck to it on multiple occasions.
If this were true, then Libby would have been charged with more than perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. Kevin wants desperately for this to be some sort of Pony under the Christmas tree, but it is just some cheap candy you get on Halloween.
What is really amusing is that the Democrats/Liberals were incensed that Clinton was indicted of very similar charges (yes, the circumstances were different, but that strikes me as basically irrelevant since the crime isn’t contingent on the circumstances). But it is a great thing that Libby is indicted on similar charges. Democrats and Republicans are opposite sides of the same coin. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to down play any wrong doing on Libby’s part. My point is the inconsistency for both parties. Back when Clinton was in the White House going after him on things like perjury was a just fine from the Republican viewpoint and a bad thing from the Democrat viewpoint. Now that the positions have switched so have the viewpoints with the Democrats taking the more rabid viewpoint this time.
