That's quite an ominous headline over Sheryl Gay Stolberg's story in today's New York Times about the conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges of Lewis Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney -- "A Judgment on Cheney Is Still to Come."
"In legal terms, the jury has spoken in the Libby case. In political terms, Dick Cheney is still awaiting a judgment. "For weeks, Washington watched, mesmerized, as the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. cast Vice President Cheney, his former boss, in the role of puppeteer, pulling the strings in a covert public relations campaign to defend the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq and discredit a critic.
"'There is a cloud over the vice president,' the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the jury in summing up the case last month.
"Mr. Cheney was not charged in the case, cooperated with the investigation and expressed a willingness to testify if called, though he never was. Yet he was a central figure throughout, fighting back against suggestions that he and President Bush had taken the country to war on the basis of flawed intelligence, showing himself to be keenly sensitive to how he was portrayed in the news media and backing Mr. Libby to the end.
"With Tuesday’s verdict on Mr. Libby -- guilty on four of five counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice -- Mr. Cheney’s critics, and even some of his supporters, said the vice president had been diminished."
[…]
"Mr. Cheney is arguably the most powerful vice president in American history, and perhaps the most secretive. The trial painted a portrait of a man immersed in the kind of political pushback that is common to all White Houses, yet often presumed to be the province of low-level political operatives, not the vice president of the United States."
—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.
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But for some reason you don
March 7, 2007 - 17:45 ET by Old EuropeBut for some reason you don't deem it necessary to zero in on Sandy Burglar's pilfering of documents to save Bill's ass. As long as you have not stopped being two-faced hypocrites, please spare me your communist, self-righteous propaganda.
This is the most incredibly t
March 7, 2007 - 19:06 ET by usinkoreaThis is the most incredibly thing to me out of the whole Libby deal. You would think looking back at Clinton's perjury would be it, but I am still shell-shocked by the deafening silence over what to me is a HUGE story. Someone once high up in the national security arena is CAUGHT redhanded trying to steal gov documents from the National Archives and caught defacing other documents --- documents related to terrorism and national security...
and the media simply could not give a shit.
(profanity is sometimes necessary......)
Actually, The Investigation i
March 7, 2007 - 18:22 ET by JayTeeActually, The Investigation is OVER.....nothing left to do.
Maybe the NYT is going to keep trying the "case" and Cheney ?........afterall, the NY Times has almost 100% Journalist Jurors....they should do very well, or 10 times better than the Libby Jurors.
Outside the Beltway, everyone looks at this as a miscarriage of Justice....sorta like the OJ Trial, but with a Guilty verdict. Attention has been focused on the Court system, specifically the "Special Prosecutor" and the DC Court system. And it doesn't bring a warm fuzzy feeling for Justice in DC........looks more like Australia and some Kangeroos running around the Court, limiting what a Defense can even present as evidence, but allowing the prosecution to bring in Bush and Cheney's name, even in the deliberation rooms.
Was it Scooter Cheney on Trial ?
At Times like these, it becomes more than just a Moral Obligation to express ones opinion, it becomes a Pleasure.
The NYT Will Be Judged
March 7, 2007 - 18:38 ET by emjem24It's very curious that the NYT has now asserted their new theory that VP Cheney is now awaiting judgement. What will it be: resignation or death by a thousand liberal barbs?
It's also very hypocritical for the NYT to be so judgemental of someone they HATE when they're going around paying $2,000 to someone for a story on kids and porn. Sounds very National Enquireresque to me.
When this paper becomes a legitimate news source again I might actually take their "judgements" seriously. Until then, plagiarism and paying for stories are just some of the ploys this newspaper uses to "compete."
Hate the paper, hate the journalists that work there, hate their message: "We're better than you. Just believe what we say, but don't look any deeper into our tactics.
The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer. Air Force Motto
emjem says: When your brain's stuck on liberalism it self-destructs.
Libby Trial
March 7, 2007 - 20:25 ET by pbthinkerThere seems to be a difference in the opinion of the Washington Post, of course no Conservative bastion in the news business, and the NY Times. Why is it that the Post recognizes Joe Wilson as a liar and the NY Times, who published his op-ed, doesn't even mention it? Could it be, BIAS?????
The Times is rooting for Cheney to have a serious problem from this. My feeling is they're the ones with the problem. They published a lying editorial and still refuse to acknowledge that fact (as has much of the MSM). For the Washington Post to acknowledge it says something about their integrity, at least as far as this incident goes.
I wonder why the media
March 7, 2007 - 19:33 ET by usinkoreaI wonder why the media can't reflect back on President Clinton's
perjury. It seems like a natural thing to do.
(It seemed like a natural thing for the industry to think about how they
were covering Pelosi vs how the covered Gingrich too - but they couldn't bring
themselves to such a reflection there either).
I blogged about this here and here.
We can clearly see what is important to the media and some groups - who say
their priorities are actually different and more noble:
The news media is crying for VP Cheney to be called before the courts and
found guilty ---- and if they can't have that ---- they want to crucify him by
convicting him in the court of public opinion.
What were the calls after it became clear President Clinton had lied under oath? Did the media go after Clinton relentlessly to see justice done after the impeachment process failed to convict him? Did they call for a criminal trial for the clear-as-day perjury? Or, did the conservatives who "forced" the impeachment process come away with more flax from the media for putting the nation through such an ordeal?
And what are the media going after Cheney for?
Fine.
They got Libby for perjury, and I believe anyone working for the federal or
state government convicted for perjury should suffer major consequences, the
more major depending on how influential/powerful their jobs were and how important
what they were telling lies about happened to be. Government officials should face the music for telling lies under oath more than average Joe or Jane Q citizen.
What about President Clinton's perjury?
Libby was convicted for what he claims are memory lapses. His lies
were supposed to be about the outing of a CIA operative. The loss of this
CIA operative's cover did not put her in danger for her life, and it doesn't
appear to have done horrible damage to our intelligence operations.
Pres. Clinton lied under oath in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
He
lied about a sexual and personal relationship with a subordinate in the White
House staff in a sexual harassment case brought by a state worker when Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
Given the Judge Clarence Thomas confirmation process, and the Bob Packwood
hearings, you would have thought sexual harassment was something the media (and
certain NGOs) felt rather strongly about...
I guess outing such a vital (tongue in cheek) CIA intel operative and having
a faulty memory about it is much more important...
The hypocrisy on things like this seems so blatantly obvious........How
does a sense of shame not kick in?
Following the Pelosi vs Gingrich fiasco, I would expect leaders in the MSM
community who really care about the profession would have gone Biblical -
sitting in the streets of Manhattan and DC on piles of ash in sackcloth tossing handfuls of soot
onto their heads.
The inability to recall how they handled Clinton's blatantly clear perjury in
something they should feel is more important (sexual harassment) should come
just short of the Pelosi vs Gingrich shame. These parallels in coverage are clear and should jump into anybody's brain who has watched the media even half-heartedly over the years. But, the still get away with it year after year --- to the point that they not only don't feel ashamed ---- they still feel self-righteous...
Amazing!