White House Blocks Another Testimony

Highly credible article from Raw Story:

"The White House appeared set for an expanded showdown with congressional investigators in the probe of the firing of eight US Attorneys over the weekend.

An attorney for Sara Taylor, a former top aide to White House adviser Karl Rove, notified the Senate that she was unlikely to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee July 11."

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticized the White House's attempt to block Taylor's testimony:

"It is unfortunate that the White House is trying to interfere with Ms. Taylor’s testimony before the Senate and with Congress’s responsibility to get to the truth behind the unprecedented firings of several U.S. Attorneys. The White House continues to try to have it both ways – to block Congress from talking with witnesses and accessing documents and other evidence while saying nothing improper occurred. I hope the White House stops this stonewalling and accepts my offer to negotiate a workable solution to the Committee’s oversight requests, as so many previous White Houses have done throughout history."

Leahy might be in for some disappointment. It is very unlikely for Taylor to testify. Last May, the Washington Post reported that Sara Taylor "was one of the first people put on the payroll of the Bush campaign, trekking through snowy Washington to interview with Karl Rove and Bush, who was then governor of Texas. Taylor worked on the 2000 campaign, and later became a political aide in the White House."

Sara Taylor's attorney also describes her as "unquestionably loyal and committed to the President and his agenda." He accuses the Judiciary Committee's request of being "unfair" for making her "the object of an unseemly tug of war" between the legislative and executive branches".

Raw Story also reports that Harriet Miers "did not know if she would appear before the House Judiciary Committee July 12."

This is yet more evidence that this administration operates on secrecy. What is it that the White House does not want the American people to know?

A Game of Dirty Politics

The cynical side of me believes this is a game of dirty politics. It is, after all, an election season. It's apparent that the Republican presidential candidates are distancing themselves from President Bush. Key Republican senators are also calling for a new direction in Iraq. Is it possible they are just trying to appeal to wary American voters who want an end to this war?

"The costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved," Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) said last week, "Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term."

Sen. Lugar was among the key GOP lawmakers who supported a troop surge in Iraq last January.

Sen. Peter Domenici (R-NM) has also changed his position on the Iraq war.

"We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress," Domenici said. "I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

Sen. Domenici claims his stance on the war has changed late last month after several conversations with family members of dead soldiers from his home state of New Mexico. Domenici embraced a new legislative proposal to reshape U.S. policy around the 79 recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

Adding insult to injury, the Sacramento Bee reports, "Rep. John Doolittle, questioning whether the Iraq war is worth the continued loss of American lives, said Thursday that US troops should be pulled back from the front lines 'as soon as possible'" and "the fighting should be turned over to Iraqi forces." The "criticism came from an archconservative Republican who had campaigned with Bush and long repeated the president's refrain that Iraq is a central front in the war on terror."

In a related story, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "Republicans will have the opportunity to not just say the right things on Iraq but vote the right way, too, so that we can bring the responsible end to this war that the American people demand and deserve."

Democrats will have that opportunity as well. But as the Defense authorization bill comes up next week, can we take Sen. Reid's word for granted, knowing he was in favor of funding the Iraq war without a timetable six weeks ago?

Clinton did it, too!

Upon being found guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was commuted by President Bush. Right-wingers, unsurprisingly, use the Clinton dodge -- he did it too! -- to justify Bush's commutation.

Clinton remains the favorite scapegoat for Republicans in trouble. Specifically, Tim Noah of slate.com argues that Libby's trial was "unfair".

"No fair-minded person can deny that the previous president committed perjury about Monica Lewinsky while serving in the Oval Office," Noah writes. "The country knew it, and it let him get away with it ... Is it really fair to treat White House aides more harshly than ordinary citizens when presidents get off scot-free?"

The question is: Did President Clinton really commit perjury? It is worth noting that lying under oath is not the same as perjury. Alex Koppelman of salon.com writes:

"The federal statute regarding perjury -- as well as many state statutes, but Clinton was testifying in a federal lawsuit, so that's the law that applies here -- requires that the lie be about something material to the case at hand. And the question of whether Clinton's lies were material to the case is by no means settled. Indeed, the judge in the case, Federal District Judge Susan Webber Wright, ruled that the Lewinsky issue was "not essential to the core issues" of the Jones lawsuit and excluded all evidence about Lewinsky from the suit."

Legal scholar Ronald Dworkin also has an answer:

"The case is somewhat stronger that Clinton committed perjury in his televised grand jury testimony when he insisted, contrary to Lewinsky's testimony, that he had not touched her breasts and genitals. The standard of materiality for a false statement before a grand jury is easier to meet than the standard for materiality in a civil action: a lie is material in the former context if the truth might have influenced the grand jury's decision whether to indict someone for a crime. But the only evidence ... that Clinton's grand jury statement was false is Lewinsky's contrary description of their sexual activities, and Posner himself reports that Lewinsky lied to her friends on several occasions about the details of these activities ... Posner chooses to believe Lewinsky in this instance, and he may be right to do so, but once again his claim of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Clinton lied seems strained."

Some might also argue that President Bush has not fully pardoned Scooter Libby, hence, we should not be outraged. There are two problems with that argument.

First, President Bush refuses to rule out a pardon for Lewis Scooter Libby. The Associated Press reports:

President Bush on Tuesday refused to rule out an eventual pardon for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, leaving open the chance he may wipe away the former White House aide's criminal record after already erasing his prison sentence.

Secondly, while it does not have anything to do with the Plame case, it is untrue that Scooter Libby is not that important in the Bush Administration. He has long been one of the most well-connected neoconservatives in the country. Along with Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Norman Podhoretz, Libby was one of the 25 signatories to the founding statement of Bill Kristol's empire-embracing Project for a New American Century in 1997. PNAC called for an invasion of Iraq long before the 9/11 attack was seized on as the "justification" for that invasion. When it comes to the political movement that has dominated the American government for the last six years, Scooter Libby was at its very crux, a close intimate of America's most powerful political officials.

Whether Bush grants Scooter Libby a pardon remains to be seen, but the Bush Administration has, once again, proven that "justice" is just a pretty word that does not have any significance.