Conservatives are outraged about the fact that Scooter Libby was convicted on four counts of lying to a grand jury and to FBI agents. Why? Because, they say, Libby is a good and loyal soldier in their cause and, besides, his perjury is a side issue from the revelation of the CIA agent’s identity. They believe Libby should be pardoned immediately.
On “Hardball,” on the day the verdicts were announced, Ed Rogers, the soul of soul-less rightwing authoritarianism, was so upset about the verdict he started to cry. “I am mad about this!” he yelped.
But wait — wasn’t it these same conservatives who drove the nation into the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton nine years ago over something really trifling, and tawdry to boot: a perjury about sex?
Conservative bristle at the comparison between Libby’s unimportant perjury and Clinton’s lie, which, as they said back then, posed a threat to our republic. If all this makes your head spin, hang on. It is actually quite simple to explain:
- Libby was lying to protect the vice president and, thus, America.
- Pres. Clinton was, you know — a Democrat.
This explains why the same Republicans who railed about “the rule of law” and moaned “What will we tell the children?” in 1998 are now yapping about legal technicalities and whining that the perjury is moot because there was “no underlying crime.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-South Carolina) who was one of the House members who prosecuted the Clinton impeachment, summed up his party’s laws-are-for-Democrats point of view on the Libby verdict:
“When it came to the grand jury, he gave false testimony allegedly about his interaction. But the underlying charge that started this investigation never materialized. So you have to put it in that perspective…It’s a bad story but it’s a different story than the way it started.”
Sen. Kay Baily Hutchinson (R-Texas), who, during the Clinton impeachment said, “Something needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray,” has changed her tune. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday she said:
“I certainly hope that, if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”
On MSBNC’s “Hardball” on Tuesday, the day the verdicts were announced, Ed Rogers, the soul of soul-less rightwing authoritarianism, was so upset about the verdict he started to cry. “I am mad about this!” he yelped.
Yesterday, on the same show, Kate O’Bierne, the right’s Mother Superior on all things, said, with a straight face that she believed the jury was simply wrong — that Libby had simply forgotten, then remembered, then forgotten, then remembered again that he originally learned the covert identity of the CIA agent from his boss, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, not NBC’s Tim Russert.
The rightwing press in lockstep is calling on Pres. Bush to pardon Libby. Despite his having been tried in a court of law by a jury of his peers, they say justice was not done.
This is an amazing display of rightwing hypocrisy — so egregious that you might think they would be ashamed of it. But they aren’t, because in their worldview, they make and enforce the laws, but they are not subject to them. Rules do not apply to them. It’s just that simple.
Update: Here we have the conservative mindset in its full fantastical flower. I happened up this logic-torturing screed written last September by Mark Levin, a girly-voiced troglodyte who made a name for himself as a frequent and fervent pro-impeachment talking head during the Clinton wars. In what follows, he provides talking points for fellow delusionists on how to square the circle in being critical of Libby’s perjury conviction while believing that Pres. Clinton committed a serious crime. It is a wonder to behold:
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Protests — 
