Decision ‘08

A Liitle of This, A Little of That…

AJStrata makes the case that we’ve got this whole special prosecutor thing all wrong. AJ, I’ll meet you this far: that’s what should be investigated…

Has Air America benefitted from diverted funds intended for inner-city youth? Sure looks that way…

Have you checked out the Daily Roundup at Election Projection? Now’s as good a time as any…

Anne Applebaum on Karen Hughes and the Islamic civil war:

…With no discussion and no debate, Hughes takes over the least noticed, least respected and possibly most important job in the State Department. Her formal title is undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. In plain English, her job is to fight anti-Americanism, promote American culture and above all to do intellectual battle with the ideology of radical Islam, a set of beliefs so powerful that they can persuade middle-class, second-generation British Muslims to blow themselves up on buses and trains.

…We need to monitor the intellectual and theological struggle for the soul of Islam, and we need to help the moderates win. This means making sure that counter-arguments are heard whenever and wherever Muslim clerics and intellectuals are talking, despite the impact of Saudi money.

One Response to “A Liitle of This, A Little of That…”

1 AJStrata Says:
July 27th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
Mark,

I’ll take that compromise! When I first started posting the concept a lot of people thought me a bit mad - the Commissar says I am out on a limb!

But I have first hand experience with prosecutors (two in the immediate family) and you have to understand how they think.

The “Rove outed Plame” deal is too soft to make a winnable case. Even to take to a grand jury. I may be wrong here, but the evidence points to (a) her employment was general knowledge to many (maybe not the public, but that is not important to how the information got out), (b) her status as a covered agent is clearly that she is not covered under the statute, and (c) Rove’s motives cannot be clearly established, but all extemperanious information at the time (emails, notes) indicate he was not outing her to do harm to National Security. OK, there is nearly 100% chance of a not getting conviction when you sum these up. So a prosecutor will NOT go out on a PR limb with this as a case.

The grand jury ‘could’ be used to get a dismissal that shields the prosecutor from claims of bias. But that would have been done long before now and not require reporters in jail for contempt.

So. We have a really shaky case on divulging Plame and we have no reason to believe the jailing of reporters was necessary to use the grand jury as cover for a dismissal.

That leaves a the only answer: there is a serious case here.

It is not hard to see what is left when all else is eliminated.