The Dish

My reponse to Ann Coulter’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s FNC show last night can be read here.

On another explosive front, a lawyer writes:

I have spent much of today watching the webcast of the Judiciary Committee hearings with the dismissed US Attorneys – from California, New Mexico and Arkansas. The testimony has been the most riveting I can remember in many years, and what’s coming out is shocking. Remember, all of these US attorneys are highly qualified, smart, professional REPUBLICANS. People who expect to have a career in elective politics, usually picked, among other things, for their long-term potential as political candidates. No problem with that after all. And that’s what makes their testimony so compelling. Because they’re portraying Alberto Gonzales and his deputy Paul J McNulty like figures out of a play by Bertolt Brecht. 

The key is crude political direction of the prosecutorial service – go get Democrats, and do it in a way to get maximum electoral benefit; lay off the corrupt Republicans; use your prosecutorial authority for voter suppression projects targeting minorities. This is exactly the sort of conduct that the system is constructed to make impossible. For three years now I’ve heard a steady flow of whispers from DOJ professionals that this sort of stuff is going on, and even I (certainly no friend of the Administration) kept thinking:  no, it can’t be. But it is. This will call for very stringent action: the appointment of a special prosecutor, an independent investigation, and certainly the dismissal of Gonzales and McNulty. Ultimately perhaps their prosecution.

Bangkok, Thailand, 7 am.

"If information comes to light or new information comes to us that would warrant us taking some action, we’ll, of course, do that," – Patrick Fitzgerald, a man who doesn’t have a record of giving up when he smells corruption.

Andy McCarthy makes it here. If I still believed that Cheney sincerely believed that there were dangerous WMDs in Iraq before the war, I might agree. But I have enough doubt on that score now to hope this matter is pursued further. Perhaps the best way is by Congressional hearings on the use or abuse of pre-war WMD intelligence. Cheney should testify. He can’t act like a monarch any more under these circumstances. And a sit-down with a poodle like Hume or Wallace won’t wash. I was going to suggest an interview with Russert, but that might get a little ridiculous.

The latest from Peter in TNR.

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent? Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something very serious to hide? He will now have to answer many questions – either before the press or before the Senate. Mark Daniels asks the right questions:

Libby was, by all accounts, Dick Cheney’s alter ego. There will thus be many questions asked about any association the Vice President may have had with Libby’s crimes. A verion of Howard Baker’s questions during the Watergate hearings, posed about Nixon, will be foremost among them:

• What did the Vice President know?
• When did he know it?

The Bush Administration, trying to assert its leadership on Iraq, the war on terrorists, and a number of domestic initiatives, may decide that they can’t afford a drawn-out defense of the Vice President. Cheney, a loyal soldier, may also be able to use his new health issues as a convenient (and legitimate) reason for stepping down. His resignation would give Bush Administration critics one less thing to complain about. And the right replacement nominated by Mr. Bush could earn him points and goodwill.

An alternative strategy would be to pardon Libby soon, as National Review is apparently proposing (their server appears to have been drudged). I can see why they feel this way. But purely from a political standpoint, such a pardon would surely ignite a massive protest, turn this story into a much bigger one, and make many more Americans curious about why their own vice-president was more interested in tackling a domestic critic in the summer of 2003 than fighting the Iraq insurgency. The risk in not pardoning Libby, of course, is that he may begin to talk. Uh-oh. The aspens could be turning. And their roots are all connected.

Check out the video news-story that will play on Pat Robertson’s television show tonight. Fascinating to see how the base is first finding out about Romney’s past.

"There is a cloud over what the vice president did. That’s not something we put there. That cloud is not something you can pretend is not there," – Patrick Fitzgerald, speaking to the jury in the Libby case.

For once, denial broke. We’re beginning to find out what Cheney knew about WMD intelligence and what he did about it. There is no graver issue than sending a country to war. If it emerges that he knew there were strong doubts about WMD intelligence and over-ruled them, he must be held accountable. Certainly his actions in the Libby case look the actions of a man with a great deal to hide. Why else risk so much?