Oh, Bull
You know, I probably read more news than is really good for me sometimes. I've always been a news junkie, and frankly, the internet hasn't been helpful in curbing that particular passion. But for all the news I read, this is the first – and I mean the very first – time I ave seen this particular meme. It's in Newsday, which is not one of the more, shall we say, conservative news out lets. But even for them, this is, I think, over the top. They say speculation is growing that Scooter Libbey will be pardoned.
And the entire article, from start to finish, is complete and utter smoke. There is no there there. At all.
WASHINGTON — Now that top White House aide Karl Rove is off the hook in the CIA leak probe, President George W. Bush must weigh whether to pardon former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the only one indicted in the three-year investigation.
Speculation about a pardon began in late October, soon after Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald unsealed the perjury indictment of Libby, and it continued last week after Fitzgerald chose not to charge Rove.
The author goes on, at some length but this is the most blatantly speculative piece of writing masquerading as news I have read recently.
Frankly, I don't like, and never have, Fitzgerald's charges. Saying someone lied about a "crime" when the underlying "crime" itself has never been proved to exist at all, is a real problem. A charge such as this a bigger threat to liberty than the supposed "crime" that is alleged to have occurred.
UPDATE: A few others really impressed with Newsday's coverage: A Blog For All, Sundries Shack, Outside The Beltway,
Media, Politics, Uncategorized | Gaius June 18, 2006
By Shawn, June 18, 2006 @ 6:23 pm
Did Jason Leopold write this as some attempt at atonement for the Rove fiasco? Heh. Libbey is the whipping boy for a political witch hunt IMHO.
By Carol Herman, June 20, 2006 @ 7:59 am
Pardon, me?
Libby is INNOCENT. The case against him is a crock. And, it’s dissolving.
Not that “on Dan RaTHer’s last days” Kurtz is still spinning kaka for the donks.
I think we should be thinking up the name of the next party that emerges from this mess. Since we’re a two-party system; and the donks don’t recover much. This is truly an UNcivil War. But our President wins it. Can’t get me to complain.