JustWonders wrote:
They have a new 'standard'. It's called "making stuff up" LOL.
You've got that same little irritating Coulterish giggle at the end of everyting you say, JW. Coulter uses it as an escape valve when she's called to support her postions and can't. Same for you?
Chrissee wrote:Repeat after me
Whoever outed Plame is a traitor. LOL
WRONG!!!!!!!!!
You have no idea what that means,do you?
Treason is the ONLY crime defined in the constitution,so lets see what the Constitution says,shall we.
In article3,section 3,we see this...
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Now,would you like to retract your statement about calling someone a trtaitor?
You should,because you are wrong.
I know waht a traitor is and whover compromised our national security by outing Plame is a traitor, tortuerd, apologetic excuses aside.
JTT wrote:JustWonders wrote:
They have a new 'standard'. It's called "making stuff up" LOL.
You've got that same little irritating Coulterish giggle at the end of everyting you say, JW. Coulter uses it as an escape valve when she's called to support her postions and can't. Same for you?
His posts consists mainly of obtuse remarks that add nothing to the conversation and it is uncanny how often he shows up when Timberlandko's nonsense has been totally obliterated.
LOL
I wouldn't be so quick to take on any bets that this sorry mess is going to result in anyone connected to the Whitehouse being indicted or even charged. These whitehouse folks are just too good at covering their tracks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070702215.html?sub=AR
Quote:Cooper on Wednesday agreed to testify in the case, reversing his long-standing refusal after saying that he had been released from his pledge of confidentiality just hours before he expected to be sent to jail for contempt of court. In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday, Luskin denied that Cooper had received a call from Rove releasing him from his confidentiality pledge. Yesterday, however, Luskin declined to comment on a New York Times report that the release came as a result of negotiations involving Rove's and Cooper's attorneys, nor would he speculate that Cooper was released from his pledge in some other fashion than a direct conversation with Rove. "I'm not going to comment any further," Luskin said.
The admission that Rove had spoken to Cooper appeared at odds with previous White House statements. In retrospect, however, these statements -- which some interpreted as emphatic denials -- were in fact carefully worded.
On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether Rove; Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or National Security Council official Elliott Abrams had told any reporter that Plame was a covert CIA agent.
"I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," McClellan said. "And that's where it stands." Reporters pressed McClellan to clarify that statement but he held to the words in his first answer until one reporter asked, "They were not involved in what?" To which he replied, "The leaking of classified information."
That left open the other question that comes into play in this episode, which is the degree to which White House officials were engaged two summers ago in a vigorous effort to discredit Wilson's accusations by discrediting Wilson himself. That in itself may not be a crime, nor would such tactics be unique to the Bush White House, given the accepted rules of political combat employed by participants in both major political parties.
Rove told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game," according to an October 2003 report in Newsweek. At a minimum Fitzgerald could turn up embarrassing information that may yet become public about how the Bush White House operates.
Although the president has encouraged full cooperation with the special prosecutor, administration officials have not appeared eager to explain fully their roles in the Wilson matter. A number of them have signed waivers of confidentiality freeing reporters with whom they have spoken from maintaining confidentiality, although Cooper and others have said they did not regard that waiver as specific enough. In other cases, administration officials have given reporters specific waivers.
But in some of those cases, officials have given the green light for reporters to testify to the grand jury in exchange for a pledge from the reporter not to reveal publicly the identity of the source or the details of the conversations.
Fitzgerald long has made a distinction in his investigation between conversations held before Novak's column was publicly available (it was moved to his newspaper clients on July 11, 2003) and after, on the assumption that once Plame's name was in the public domain, there was no criminal liability for administration officials to discuss it. Which may be one reason it could be difficult to obtain indictments. After almost two years, Fitzgerald finds only one person in jail as a result of his inquiry -- a reporter who never wrote an article about the leak.
[full article at link]
Chrissee wrote:I know waht a traitor is and whover compromised our national security by outing Plame is a traitor, tortuerd, apologetic excuses aside.
Sorry to disagree but if you are going to allege "traitor" in a specific situation you should bear in mind there's a legal definition. I mean if it we were arguing about someone in a football team who was seeking a transfer to another team we might yell "traitor!" at that person but we would hardly be making that refernence in a legal sense but even here in a discussion forum I think it's important not to let the definitions get too rubbery.
Rove might allegedly be a felon but he (by the definition put forward by MM) isn't close to being alleged to be a "traitor" in the proper sense of the word.
Just adding that there have been less than 40 convictions on federal and only two on state level of treasonery in history.
"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."
I didn't say that he committed treason. I said he was a traitor. ASnd I will stand by what I said. The judge in the matter said, according to O'Donnell, that there is sufficient evidence that a VERY SERIOUS CRIME THAT COMPROMISED NATIONAL SECURITY was commited.
Whoever did this is a traitor.
As said before - in legal terms and qua definitionem: only someone who committs treason is a traitor.
JTT wrote:"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."
That was George W Bush, in case anyone else didnt know and was curious (Googled it)
JTT wrote:JustWonders wrote:
They have a new 'standard'. It's called "making stuff up" LOL.
You've got that same little irritating Coulterish giggle at the end of everyting you say, JW. Coulter uses it as an escape valve when she's called to support her postions and can't. Same for you?
A little cranky now that Rove's been cleared, aren't ya JTT?
[size=7]<Mission accomplished lol>[/size]
Walter Hinteler wrote:As said before - in legal terms and qua definitionem: only someone who committs treason is a traitor.
evidently, George W. Bush doesn't know that.
Chrissee wrote:... when Timberlandko's nonsense has been totally obliterated.
LOL
I'd be interested to see what you think constitutes an example of that.
Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill
Jay Rosen
Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me. -- Robert Novak, "Mission to Niger," July 14, 2003.
I, for one, have had it with Robert Novak. And if all the journalists who are talking today about "chilling effects" and individual conscience mean what they say, they will, as a matter of conscience and pride, start giving Novak himself the big chill.
That means if you're a Washington columnist maybe you don't go on CNN with him-- until he explains. If you're a newspaper editor you consider suspending his column until he explains. If you're Jonathan Klein, president of CNN/US, you take him off the air until he decides to go on the air and explain. If you're John Barron, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, you suspend your columnist (with pay, I should think); and if Barron won't do it then publisher John Cruickshank should.
If Novak says he can't talk until the case is over, then he shouldn't be allowed to publish or opine on the air until the case is over. He should know the rage some of his colleagues feel. Claiming to be "baffled" by Novak's behavior may have been plausible for a while. With Miller now sitting in jail, and possibly facing criminal charges later, "baffled" is sounding lame.
After the decision yesterday someone asked Bill Keller, top editor of the New York Times, if this was really a whistle-blowing case. Keller answered: "you go to court with the case you've got." I understood what he meant, but that answer was incomplete.
For in certain ways the case that sent Judith Miller to jail is about a classic whistler blower: diplomat Joseph Wilson. Those "two senior administration officials" in Novak's column had a message for him: stick your neck out and we'll stick it to your wife. (They did: her career as an operative is over.) Might that have some chilling effect?
We're not entirely in the dark about how the conversation might have gone. Yesterday Walter Pincus of the Washington Post posted this recollection:
On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. I didn't write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip.
Pincus didn't take the "information," Novak did. Why? Did it occur to Novak that this could be retribution against a critic of the White House? Pincus thought the leaker was "practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson." What did Novak think? The New York Times in an editorial today:
It seemed very possible that someone at the White House had told Mr. Novak about Ms. Plame to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility and send a chilling signal to other officials who might be inclined to speak out against the administration's Iraq policy. At the time, this page said that if those were indeed the circumstances, the leak had been "an egregious abuse of power." We urged the Justice Department to investigate.
Tell me: how can journalists say with a straight face that they are concerned for future whistle blowers if one of their own, Robert Novak, together with sources made possible an act of retribution against an actual whistle blower?
We do not know enough to say of Novak, "he should be the one in jail." But we do know enough to keep him off the air and the op-ed pages until he makes a fuller statement. (Times editorial: "Like almost everyone, we are baffled by his public posture.") It may be that he betrayed the principles for which his colleague Judy Miller is in jail. The editor who decides to drop Novak's column until such time as he explains himself would be listening to the voice of professional conscience, in my view.
As the judge said Judy Miller can escape her jail cell by finally choosing to talk, so could Novak restore his column and TV appearances by finally talking about his part in the story. Novak is said to have lots of friends in the press. Friends would let him know the time is here.
Those who claim that Rove has, how do you put it, 'been cleared' is getting ahead of themselves.
Of course, it would be getting ahead of MYSELF to proclaim that he is guilty. So I won't do that yet (I mean, he is guilty of innumerable crimes, just not ones that have been proven in court, of course).
People who are arguing about whether or not a secret operative was outed are missing the larger Conspiracy and Perjury angles. These charges are much, much easier to make stick; and dominoes have a way of falling in a row, dontcha know?
Remember the article I posted eariler in which the Judge's opinion of the Merits of the case had 7 blacked-out pages; apparently the info in those pages was quite compelling to all involved that there had been some sort of crime committed.
Just as our pronouncing Rove guilty does not make him so,
Insipid and snide proclamations (looking at JW, who hasn't made a post of substance in her entire time on A2K) that he is not and that the whole thing will blow over do not make it so, either.
So we'll just have to wait and see; and isn't that the fun part?
Cheers
Cycloptichorn
<gasp> But BBB, isn't that "censorship"? What about "Freedom of Speech"?
[/mock concern]
