One of the more irritating of our media’s obsessions is the visit to the local diner to ascertain what ‘regular’ Americans are thinking about the issues of the day. Don’t let the fact that the average cranky, homogeneous, low-information diner visitor scarcely resembles the entirety of America stop you.
The reason I mention this is an observation I’ve made with few data points and no research.
This story best represents the intersection of several seemingly disparate threads that intertwine the last American decade. It appears that an NSA wiretap ensnared Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California discussing a quid pro quo arrangement with a “suspected Israeli agent”.
The most important story that most people know nothing about is the Scooter Libby perjury trial. This trial delivers – Freedom of the Press, Undercover Spying, WMD, Iran, Iraq, the cozy and manipulative relationship the Bush White House has with the Press, bloggers…and well, everything, including possibly the kitchen sink.
The grand jury from whom these charges sprung was charged with determining if a crime had been committed by the disclosure of the name of an undercover CIA operative doing WMD research against Iran and Iraq in an attempt to smear her husband, war critic of former Ambassador to Iraq Joe Wilson, in response to an OpEd he wrote asserting that Iraq never made an attempt to acquire "yellowcake uranium" as mentioned by the President in his notorious SOTU address regarding the "16-words".
The subpeona list was literally a who's who of the government and press, and in the end, the machinations and statements of Scooter Libby, and their contrast with "the truth", ended in perjury charges for "Irving".
But the nagging question remains – is Patrick Fitzgerald, Republican US Attorney from Chicago, Roman Catholic, Jesuit Educated, "relentless" prosecutor done? Not based on this statement, as recapped at Rawstory, from his rebuttal of the defense closing argument:
While rebutting the closing argument by the defense at I. Lewis Libby's trial, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spoke of a "dark cloud over the White House," due to the alleged obstruction of justice by the former White House aide. At the Washington Post's website, columnist Dan Froomkin points out that for the first time, as many have speculated, the prosecutor wasn't just accusing Libby, he was also referring to "them."
According to Froomkin, Fitzgerald "at long last made it quite clear that the depth of Vice President Cheney's role in the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative is one of the central mysteries that Libby's alleged lies prevented investigators from resolving."
"There is a cloud over the vice president . . . And that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice," Fitzgerald said. "There is a cloud over the White House. Don't you think the FBI and the grand jury and the American people are entitled to straight answers?" More…
From ThinkProgress:
August 22 is a day “some Shiite sects believe…could correspond to the end of the world.” That’s enough for neoconservatives to conclude Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have “chosen to launch the apocalypse” tomorrow.
