Libby, Stevens and Prosecutorial Misconduct

Interesting connection between the Stevens and Libby cases:

…In the Libby case, the press avoided what I thought was a critical bit (among many) of prosecutorial legerdemain: The last minute admission in court that respecting the first interview of the key witness, the late Tim Russert, the newscaster told the FBI agent Eckenrode (missing from the case by the time it was tried) that he may well have told Libby that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA at the very time Libby recalled Russert had.

The original copy of those notes was somehow missing from the prosecution’s files and could not, therefore, be given to the defense — who surely would have been able to make a great deal more of this had the agent and his notes been available at trial.

So, it was with great interest that I read that the Department of Justice attorney, Brenda Morris, already held in contempt by Judge Sullivan in the matter involving the wrongful prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens, and now under investigation by both the Department of Justice and the special prosecutor chosen by the Judge, was also a supervisor in the Libby case…

…I am dismayed to learn that so many people are under the impression that the Stevens case was dropped because of some mere technicality, and not because the case against him was riddled with perjured testimony and evidence of his innocence was unlawfully hidden by the prosecution team. I ask if you hear anyone say anything so foolish that you set them straight.

Stevens had an A- Frame house in Alaska for which he’d engaged a contractor (Veco) to do some renovation work. He asked for and received bills for this work for which he paid Veco in full in the sum of $150,000. The government claimed that the job was really worth $250,000 and that Stevens violated the law when he failed to disclose as a gift the additional $100,000 on his Senate ethics reporting form. The government never charged that VECO had sought any favors for this “gift” or that Stevens had done any for VECO. The crux of the case was only about whether or not he had paid fair value for the work.

The foreman on the job was a Mr. Allen. On April 15, 2008 , before Stevens was indicted ,the government interviewed Allen and he provided a great deal of evidence that established that Stevens’ defense was credible. For example, he valued the work done for Stevens at $80,000, about ½ of what Stevens had paid for it and about 1/3 of what the government said it was worth. The government had an obligation to turn this over to Stevens and never did. Had they done so, much of Allen’s testimony for the prosecution on the stand would surely have been discredited on cross examination. But there is more.

On Oct. 6, 2002, Stevens sent a handwritten note to Allen asking that it be “done right” making clear he wanted to pay in full for Veco’s services, adding

“You owe me a bill.” “Remember Torricelli, my friend. Friendship is one thing, compliance with the ethics rules entirely different.”

The author goes on to note that there has been a rule against bringing prosecutions against politicians right in front of elections – this being a means of preventing prosecutors from deciding the outcome of elections. The mere fact that Stevens was on trial right in front of the election should have raised some warning bells – and now that the case has completely fallen apart, what we have is a man who has been slandered and who lost an election due to a prosecutor not doing her job right.

Then we go back to the Libby case – the completely bogus notion that because Libby had a different memory of a conversation he was accused of perjuring himself in a case which centered on who told a name, with that name-teller not being Libby and such fact already known by the prosecutor. And there is that oddity where evidence exonerating Libby was not brought forward by the prosecution, even though are required by law to be diligent in providing exculpatory evidence to the defense. The conviction we know was done by a jury pulled from a very liberal demographic group who were essentially told they were trying President Bush for lying us into war – but how did the case even go to trial? Who allowed this crock of nonsense, and the Stevens crock of nonsense, to go forward?

We’ll probably never fully get to the bottom of it – while Morris clearly is hip deep in both cases, she’s not a free agent. Even if only lightly supervised, she was still supervised and someone other than her had to sign off on the cases. But finger pointing and obfuscatory statements will ensure that the tangled web being woven won’t be unraveled for some time to come. But these cases – as well as the bogus cases against the Duke lacrosse team, Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay indicate a need for a careful reform of the way cases are brought before a court.

What exact form such reform would take I haven’t thought all the way through at the moment, but I think that central to any such reform is to create some means where a prosecutor doesn’t have a free hand in bringing charges. This would probably require a modification of the Grand Jury system – providing more power, and more independent power, to the Grand Jury so that it may ride herd on the prosecutors. We can also ensure against such things as the Libby case by making it that when an appointed official of the Executive branch is brought to trial, he must be brought to trial in the jurisdiction he resided in prior to taking office…this will stymie most politically-motivated prosecutions of Republicans as the jury will no longer be made up of DC liberals, but of Texas conservatives, and such. It won’t have any effect on liberals as most who come to DC reside in liberal hotbeds and so its a matter of perfect indifference as to where they are tried.

The justice system belongs to the people, not to the prosecutors. Via our juries, we are to decide who is guilty of what – and so we must make it via our Grand Juries that the decision is made to bring charges against a man…but not the lapdog grand juries we have today, but genuinely independent bodies who can ask questions, query the accused, demand to see all the evidence, etc, etc, etc. It is said with great truth that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich – this is something which we must change – our liberty is too precious a thing to be placed at risk by prosecutors playing to the galley and hoping to strike it rich by dragging some poor soul through a trial.

A Foreigner Unimpressed With the Obama Road Show

There are some out there who don’t pant with lust at the mere thought of Obama being President of the United States of America:

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you’d notice.

Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets – suddenly it is flag-day in Aberdeen…

…Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l’il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.

“Rules must be binding,” declared Obama, referring to the fact that Kim had just breached UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718. “Violations must be punished.” (Sounds ominous.) “Words must mean something.” (Why, Barack? They never did before, for you – as a cursory glance at your many speeches will show.)

President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America’s missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun.

Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever.

One would hope that now he’s been shafted by the G20, screwed over by NATO and otherwise humiliated from start to finish during this foreign tour that Obama would become a bit more wise…but it does seem that the fawning media and the start-struck crowds have made a larger impression on Obama than reality. North Korea flashes its dong at us, and Obama and Co don’t just flub that, but then find themselves held at bay by a few ragged pirates in a lifeboat. Its going to be a long four years in foreign and defense policy, boys and girls.

"Grand Exalted Poobah for National Automotive Strategy"

Iowahawk strikes again.

How many times have you said to yourself, “if only GM offered a pink flaked, green flamed pickup with an 8 duece blown Hemi, refridgerated full keg with console mounted beer tap, rifle rack with matching pink machine gun, and angel fur cab full of Playboy models”?

Conservatives for Palin

If you love Sarah – and we all do, of course; only panty-waist liberals and ugly lesbians take issue with her, as we all know – then this website will become a regular for you.

Of Humans and Clams

Nicholas Kristof has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times, entitled, “Humanity, Even for Nonhumans,” speaking of those who believe that the human race has the moral obligation to relieve suffering of species that we tend to uh… eat. Some interesting tidbits in Kristof’s column include this pioneer in animal “rights.”

One of the few exceptions was Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher who 200 years ago also advocated for women’s rights, gay rights and prison reform. He responded to Kant’s lack of interest in animals by saying: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Interesting line of questioning, especially the italicized phrase.

Fast forward to a modern, “enlightened” animal rights whacko, also mentioned in the Kristoff piece:

Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer.

Professor Singer wrote a landmark article in 1973 for The New York Review of Books and later expanded it into a 1975 book, “Animal Liberation.” That book helped yank academic philosophy back from a dreary foray into linguistics and pushed it to confront such fascinating questions of applied ethics as: What are our moral obligations to pigs?

John Maynard Keynes wrote that ideas, “both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.” This idea popularized by Professor Singer — that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species — is one whose time appears to have come.

“There’s some growth in numbers of vegetarians, but the bigger thing is a broad acceptance of the idea that animals count,” Mr. Singer reflected the other day.

Kristoff goes on to further describe the encounter he had with Singer:

I eagerly pushed Mr. Singer to find his boundaries. “Do you have any compunctions about swatting a cockroach?” I asked him. “Not much,” he replied, citing reasons to doubt that insects are capable of much suffering. Mr. Singer is somewhat unsure about shellfish, although he mostly gives them the benefit of the doubt and tends to avoid eating them.

If Mr. Singer, a known leftist, would channel his compassion toward ending suffering for all forms of life, animal and human, I may have respect for what he has to say. But like most leftists with regard to their storeroom of compassion, Mr. Singer’s capacity for compassion weighs empty when it comes to human beings:

An internationally known Princeton “bioethicist” and animal-rights activist says he’d kill disabled babies if it were in the “best interests” of the family, because he sees no distinction in the child’s life whether it is born or not, and the world already allows abortion.

The comments come from Peter Singer, a controversial bioethics professor, who responded to a series of questions in the UK Independent this week.

Earlier, WND reported Singer believes the next few decades will see a massive upheaval in the concept of life and rights, with only “a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists” still protecting life as sacrosanct.

To the rest, it will be a commodity to be re-evaluated regularly for its worth.

To the irreligious left who eschew boiling lobster, who protest killing whales, or baby seals, or for that matter Mr. Singer, who eschews eating oysters on the half-shell due at the mere ‘possibility’ of their suffering, their stores of compassion somehow run precariously dry when newborn or soon-to-be-born human beings enter the equation.

Being leftists, they celebrate human death. That’s why they worshipped Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara and the North Vietnamese communists, and continue to worship Castro, Chavez and other murderers. That is why they celebrated the banning of DDT, even though they knew it would result in untold human deaths due to malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

To the left, human death is cool. Human death is righteous. For human death fits right in to the Marxist bromide, “Everything that exists deserves to be destroyed.” In their view, which is reflective of their über prophet, Karl Marx, their phoenix that is their otherwise unattainable socialist utopia must necessarily rise from the ashes of human debris.

To the leftist, death is cleansing; death means rebirth.

Human death, anyway.

In short, leftists, at their very core, operate from a platform of pure evil.

Immigration Reform: The Democrats Third Rail?

Victor Davis Hanson notes that the narrative might come out very negative for the Democrats:

There is a great deal of chest-thumping among Obama’s supporters that “comprehensive immigration” reform is an invaluable campaign issue that will ensure a Democratic Southwest, as Republicans fall into some sort of nativist trap.

I’m not so sure. Hispanics respect the rule of law as much as anyone; closing the borders first, then worrying about the auxillary issues later, won’t necessarily prove polarizing, especially if presented in terms of a desire to insist on the rule of law and a racially/ethnically blind nation. This year’s immigration lead-ins on the evening news are not Minutemen on the border and poor immigrants wandering the desert deprived of water by cruel Americans, but lines of Americans at job fairs, reports that the unemployed are looking for any sort of work that they can get their hands on, and a brutality and savagery right across the border every bit as disturbing as what we’ve seen on jihadist videos.

What will cause polarization is a radical Democratic drive now for de facto amnesty without border closure — at a time of rising unemployment here at home and utter chaos and violence in Mexico. So far the real extremist rhetoric (cf. Ms. Pelosi’s recent rants in California) has come from the open-borders side, not from those who wish to return to legal immigration and a border run in accordance with the law.

It must be kept in mind that the people of real cruelty in this debate are those who are in favor of open borders – open borders which only profit the corrupt in Mexico and the United States who see human beings as objects to be exploited. The reason we hold that the rule of law is precious is because without law, humans are sheep thrown to the wolves. While we have only one ultimate Shepherd, while we live on Earth the law is our day to day shepherd. Part of our problem, I think, is that liberals and their leftist offspring don’t really understand what law is, nor what justice is…nor, indeed, what charity is, when you get right down to it.

It is illegal to cross our borders without permission – liberals say that the law is to be set aside based on a narrative of alleged American racism, imperialism in hispanic lands and the poverty of the illegal immigrants. It is unjust to Americans to force them to provide social services to those who are in the country illegally – liberals say that justice actually means anyone who arrives in any state of need must be given all we have. Charity is when a person volunteers to help another, including those Americans who go down south and work as teachers, doctors, engineers and such to help alleviate the poverty of our brothers and sisters in hispanic lands – liberals say that charity is providing taxpayer funds for race-baiting groups who thrive on having poor, excluded groups they can run as private fiefdoms.

The topsy-turvy liberal view of immigration had the benefit of a friendly media and a heart-tugging narrative…but such things have worn thin. The first blow against the narrative was when those pro-illegal immigration demonstrators carried Mexican flags through America’s streets…the American people awoke to the fact that we weren’t just getting gardeners and dry wall installers, we were actually importing a foreign nation, hostile to America as a whole. The second blow came with the downturn in the economy…Americans are suffering a lot of hardship, themselves, and so stories of Mexican poverty will pull less heart strings than they used to. The third and, perhaps, final blow is the growing levels of nauseating violence in Mexico…who wants to get mixed up in that sort of thing? Better to keep it in Mexico and try to help the Mexicans stamp it out, but no need to bring it into El Paso, San Diego and Albuquerque.

As I’ve said before and will continue to say – I’m in favor of immigration and have an especial desire for those Mexican and other immigrants who are willing to work so hard and who’s religious faith is so strong that in both labor and faith, these immigrants will go a long way towards reinvigorating America’s moral and economic health. I want those who are here and have settled into our community as good Americans to be given amnesty and made citizens on a fast track. I want a guest worker program to allow foreigners to fill those jobs American’s won’t do (I note with great care that even with unemployment heading towards 10% there is a lack of Americans applying for work in the fields and ditches of America’s hardest labor). But the first thing: a secure border. The laws enforced. Justice assured. Charity for all who need it.

If the Democrats believe they can secure a permanent majority by pandering to the advocates of illegal immigration, then by all means: have at it. We GOPers should counter that with a program designed to bring all Americans – immigrant and native – into the support of the rule of law and a genuine sense of justice and mercy for those who suffer poverty in foreign lands. We can simply tell the truth – Democrats are pandering for votes, America be damned; illegal immigrant advocates are either race-hustlers or corporate exploiters; the people who profit from illegal immigrants aren’t the immigrants, but corrupt Mexican politicians, Mexican criminal gangs and those in America who view human beings as a commodity. I believe that we will win such a debate.

Now, lets have it – if the Democrats have the guts (and idiocy) to try.

Rove Calls Biden a Liar

The news story:

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Vice President Biden a “liar” on Thursday, dramatically escalating a feud between Biden and aides to former President George W. Bush over Biden’s claims to have rebuked Bush in private meetings.

“I hate to say this, but he’s a serial exaggerator,” Rove told FOX News. “If I was being unkind I would say liar. But it is a habit he ought to drop.”

Rove added: “You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the Vice President of the United States.”

Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, although Biden spokesman Jay Carney told Fox on Wednesday: “The vice president stands by his remarks.”

Carney was referring to two controversial assertions by Biden, the latest coming Tuesday during an interview on CNN.

“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office,” Biden began, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.’”

The exchange is purely “fictional,” said Rove, who was Bush’s top political adviser in the White House.

“It didn’t happen,” Rove, a FOX News contributor and former Bush adviser, told Megyn Kelly in an interview taped for “On The Record.” “It’s his imagination; it’s a made-up, fictional world.

Given the number of times Biden has been found to be stunningly wrong in his statements, we’ll have to go with Rove’s assertion – but I would add, in being generous, that Biden probably thinks it did happen. He does seem to live in a bit of a dream world where imagination and reality are interchangeable – Biden probably wanted to say something like that, and he likely rehearsed it over and over again in his head enough times that it started to become real to him…and then, in typical Biden fashion, when he needed something to say, it just popped out. Its really no different from his absurdly stupid statement during the VP debate where he asserted that the US and France had kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

The bad news is that Biden is Vice President of the United States – this curiously means that we conservatives are praying daily for the continued good health of the President. Still, thought should be given to trying to force Biden out – get him to resign and allow Obama to select someone a bit more grounded in reality to take over the number 2 slot. Still not too late to get Hillary in there – though I can understand why Obama wouldn’t want to paint a target on his own back…

Good Friday

Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. – Isaiah 53:1-12

All the glory and beauty of Christ are manifested within, and there He delights to dwell; His visits there are frequent, His condescension amazing, His conversation sweet, His comforts refreshing; and the peace that He brings passeth all understanding. – Thomas a’ Kempis

Left Starts to Fear "Tea Party" Movement

And the fear is palpable:

The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party-people consider themselves a coherent and diverse network of Americans from every conceivable walk of life. They are cultural warriors fighting against the tax-happy, spend-happy ways of the evil Obama cabal, real American patriots, and staunch defenders against the creeping evils of Socialism.

In reality, their ‘movement’ is incredibly divisive, a mindset that stands in sharp contrast to Obama’s calls for bipartisanship in this time of great national need. Their arguments have the potential to divide the country along titanic lines not seen since the bloody days of the Civil War.

Think I’m exaggerating here? The Tea Party movement is an incredibly dangerous concept, fuelled by the usual gushes of sycophantic support from the conservative news media (here’s looking at you, Fox). Consider a recent poll posted on Sean Hannity’s website, asking his loyal followers if they thought America was ripe for ‘revolution’. Or perhaps you’ve heard some of the vitriolic treasonous crap spewing forth from the mouth of Fox’s resident white-haired lunatic, He Who Shall Go Unnamed. You can tune in to his show practically any day of the week for an (increasingly) thinly veiled call to arms against the President and his evil liberal cronies.

The Tea Party Movement is basically a flag for Republicans disenfranchised by last year’s election results to rally behind. Give it up, guys. You lost fair and square. Obama and his policies have the mandate of the people- unlike a certain Bush I could mention.

If the country continues down this dark path, a second Civil War might not just be a cool idea for a sci-fi novel anymore. Can you imagine the potential for chaos if some of these ‘protesters’ decide to exercise the Second Amendment and bring their weapons to these rallies? There’s a thin line between peaceful protest and bloodthirsty patriotic fervor, especially if those protesting are used to being on the side of the mighty status quo.

In a certain sense, this kook is right – we are ripe for a civil war in this country. But the threat doesn’t come from that fact that people will be out protesting Obamunism, but from the past 30 years of leftist hate- and fear-mongering. We on the right are simply tired of trying to accommodate the left. We’ve been insulted one too many times, and we’re in no mood to continue with the status quo.

For the past 30 years, if a conservative said that affirmative action is misguided, he’s been called a racist; if he says that homosexual sex is a sin, he’s been called a homophobe; if he holds that the border should be controlled, he’s been called a racist; if he asserts that physical standards for cops and firefighters shouldn’t be lowered to allow more women in, he’s been called a sexist; if he states that America stand against communist tyranny, he’s been called an imperialist; if he welfare is destructive, he hates the poor; if he thinks that social security should be privatized, he wants to kill old people…on and on and on; pick any conservative position, and the left doesn’t argue against it – all it does is try to demonize the conservative messenger.

Well, we conservatives are not a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, greedy, imperialist bastards. We just don’t think that the prescriptions of liberalism and its offspring, socialism, are correct. And we’re not going to lay down any longer for the left – we had one, last chance at national unity after 9/11 and we extended the olive branch. All we got for our trouble was a campaign of slander against President Bush and any GOPer who the left could lay its hands on. The cup of concord is broken – we are willing to repair it, but the left must cease and desist with its attempts to destroy us. Argue with us; contest us at the polls – but don’t try to force us out of the debate by slandering us, and then turning about demanding bi-partisanship. Nothing doing.

We intend to demonstrate, agitate and do everything we can to obtain power over the next two election cycles. If we win, we won’t spend even a moment reaching out to the left – we’re just going to completely overturn the left’s policies and set America back on its proper, conservative path. Once we do obtain power, if the left shows proper respect and treats us decently, then if we are forced out of power at some future election, we’ll be more than willing to do the same…but the first move is up to the left. The left has to atone for the poison it has injected into our politics – only then can national unity be restored.

Contradicting Video Evidence, White House Denies Obama Bowed To Saudi King

In case you haven’t heard, Obama’s media disinformation machine at the White House is denying that Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah while at the G-20 Summit…

“It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Washington Times called the alleged bow a  “shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate” and said it violated centuries of American tradition of not deferring to royalty. The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, noted that American protocol apparently rules out bowing, or at least it reportedly did on the occasion of a Clinton “near-bow” to the emperor of Japan.

Interestingly, a columnist in the Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq Alawsat also took the gesture as a bow and appreciated the move.

Of course this explanation is actually contradicted by video of the incident, which undeniably shows Obama bowing, and the Saudi King actually looking down towards Obama, not at his eye level.

Click here for the video. Here is a screenshot, with King Abdullah’s line of sight illustrated.

That, my friends, is all you need to see. That was a bow. Obama bowed roughly 10-12 inches lower than the King’s eyes, much more than necessary if it were only to aid in the grasping of his hands. So the excuse by the White House is laughable.