Friday, April 14, 2006

Bush/Cheney's Obstruction of Justice Finally Makes Al Franken's Radar

I'm listening right now to The Al Franken Show on AAR, where Joe Conason's a guest. Joe just explained to an incredulous Al that:

1) It is a crime to make false statements to a federal prosecutor;

2) It doesn't matter whether the speaker was or was not under oath;

3) It's questionable whether Bush and Cheney told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald the truth when he interviewed them about former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby's leak to journalists of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity (a leak that, it increasingly appears, was expressly authorized by both Bush and Cheney); and

4) It's also questionable whether Fitzgerald would tell us if Bush and Cheney did mislead him, since he can't indict them while they're in office, which means Congressional Democrats need to get on the stick to find out for themselves.

A lot of folks have been trying to get these issues into the broader consciousness, starting eight days ago. Now that it's on Franken's and Conason's radar, maybe it will seep into the Beltway and the MSM, to counter the erroneous meme that Libby's leak couldn't have involved a Presidential crime. I love Air America, but it does get frustrating when it takes eight days to get important information and analysis from the liberal blogosphere to the "mainstream" liberal media. I tremble to think how quickly Al will become insulated from the grassroots once he's in the Senate.

Conason made an interesting, new point: that Congress could pass a law obligating Fitzgerald to tell what he knows. But I'm not holding my breath, with Rahm Emanuel is charge and the DLC pulling the strings...

Other posts on this topic: here, here, here, and here. This is an important issue, one the Republicans hope will just glaze our eyes over with legal technicalities but could be Bush's Watergate; please stay on it!
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lucretia: Al has been saying that Bush obviously didn't commit a crime, since he has the power to declassify intelligence. I still don't think he understands that Bush DIDN'T declassify the NIE until later -- that this was a leak, not a declassification. And until yesterday he thought that Bush was off the hook because he wasn't under oath -- what he was "incredulous" about was that it's a crime to make false statements to a prosecutor even if you're not under oath. That was news to him.

Pretty crazy that it took 8 days for that sort of thing to seep in, huh?