Two points for Mr. Cohen – if Cohen isn’t sure that Bush was involved, why did Bush get his own (private) legal counsel that would allow him to avail himself of solicitor-client privilege, instead of relying on the White House Counsel? (OK, I know if my ass was on the line I might not want to rely on Gonzales’ legal advice either, but I’m sure the lack of s/c privilege was the reason Bush went with private counsel). Second, Cohen seems to be bemoaning the setting of perjury traps as a political weapon – something I would agree was the case in the Clinton case, where not only was there no underlying crime, there was no underlying TORT! (the Paula Jones sexual harassment case was dismissed on summary judgment – there was no â€there†there). In this case, not so much. The â€no underlying crime†argument seems to be to have application beyond poor Scooter’s case – in U.S. v. Nixon, one of the grounds for breaching â€executive privilege†is the existence of a criminal case, and I think that the Watergate veteran Fred Fielding is thinking a couple of moves ahead here to protect the White House – if it is also a useful Libby talking point, that’s a bonus, but not the real argument.

Jodi! His opinion is not the issue. He does not know the facts and repeatedly misstates the facts.

More to the point, Jodi, he’s a partisan of Libby’s. And who are Libby’s partisans? I have no trouble citing, once again, the very obvious name of Marc Rich, and all that it designates in the political sphere. In other words, I take Cohen’s support for Libby as a sign that he’s in bed with AIPAC, and I don’t like AIPAC at all.

Do you?

Exactly what I felt. I rarely write letters but late night Tuesday (one of the great things about living on the west coast is that the day’s news comes early for us, like the evening before) I wrote the bastard basically what you posted: sadly irrelevant and not worth the time to even argue because he’s so uninformed, even for a beltway pundit. Keep up the great work madam. You rock!

Please don’t let EW read the rest of Mr. Cohen’s rant. He griped about answering a question from an â€anonymous†questioner. (On his employer’s website, which doesn’t have a field for submitting a name with your question.) I guess that means Mr. Cohen feels courageous when, taking down a high six or seven-figure income and having the WaPoo to back him up, he signs his own name to his â€workâ€.

More fun than that was his bashing Fitz for besmirching the integrity of journalists and for making it harder for them to keep their sources secret. He forgets that Mr. Libby could have prevented Ms. Miller’s enforced 85-day celibacy and sobriety by simply telling the truth to the grand jury.

Lil’ Scoot and Big Dick used a willing press to cover up their own wrongdoing. They abused its ability to protect a source from unjust retaliation in order to keep their lies off the front page and their asses out of jail. Novacula and Ms. Miller were eager participants; they sold their integrity the same way the ladies pay the rent by selling theirs on 15th and M. Across the street, as it happens, from the WaPoo’s main office.

At heart, I think Mr. Cohen is just scared that if EW and Jane H. keep this up for long, he’ll have to get off his bar stool and learn to be a reporter again.

[E]vidence submitted at the trial made it clear that on June 9, Bush got involved. And later, on July 10, Condi passed on that â€Bush is comfortable.â€

…Dick Cheney claims to have asked Bush to declassify Plame’s identity the NIE. If Cheney did, in fact, have Bush unilaterally declassify Plame’s identity the NIE, I’d say that means he was involved.

I don’t think Jodi’s up to debating these facts but maybe Tom Maguire will drop in for a little speculation…

Why do people like Cohen and Jodi and Thompsen and Romney fail to understand the principles of federal prosecutors, grand jury secrecy, not discussing people not indicted and the reasons therefor?

Cohen, Thompson and Romney are gossips and legal illiterates. They’re totally clueless about the need for secrecy, and if they have, for some reason, gotten clearances, those should be revoked.

OT – YearlyKos is coming up soon. I hope a lot of TNH commenters will be able to make it!

If you are still undecided, I strongly encourage you to go ahead and make your reservations now.

I wrote on a comment on Cohen’s column the night it went up on the web, I was so astonished by the ignorance. It was possibly even worse than David Broder’s attempt to compare Harry Reid to Abu G. But the live chat yesterday was really beyond the pale. He doesn’t know why Libby lied, but he’s sure it was inadvertent? That sounds awfully like Abu G’s â€I don’t know how the decisions were made, but I know they were not made for improper reasons.†Hey, I’m just a columnist for one of the country’s leading papers. Hey, I’m just the Attorney General. I don’t need no stinkin’ facts to know that me and my friends did nothing wrong!

The title of your next book, Marcy, ought to be â€Willful Blindness, a/k/a ’Lying.’â€

Why do people like Cohen and Jodi and Thompsen and Romney fail to understand the principles of federal prosecutors, grand jury secrecy, not discussing people not indicted and the reasons therefor?

Neil, they do understand. They however chose not to since it does not fit in with their propaganda and spin. Its always one way when it comes to their ilk but the exact same scenario with anyone else will have just the opposite response. So in the case of Clinton, perjury for a non-crime (the Paula Jones case was thrown out by a court) it is an impeachable offense. But when its Scooter and Shooter outing a CIA NOC and lying to a grand jury to prevent the investigation from proceeding and a jury convicting its all a miscarriage of justice.

Hypocrisy and shame? The wingnuts are full of one and feel none of the other.

Can anyone explain why Cohen thinks that Fitz was appointed because the lib-ruhls demanded it? Memo to Richard: Fitz was appointed because the FBI thought that Libby and Rove were lying to them. The FBI and the DOJ finally convinced Ashcroft to recuse himself from the case, and James Comey (also not a lib-ruhl) appointed Fitz. Speaking for the liberals, I can say that we’re glad that Libby was brought to justice, but this has been a Republican show from start to finish. The only liberals or Democrats involved are Libby’s lawyers.

I sent in a question, and I am just stunned he didn’t take it. The questions he did take were pretty good (not as good as mine), but all you get is repetition of the points in his column. As noted, someone got him to admit that Libby is guilty, guilty, guilty, but he apparently doesn’t know what Libby is guilty of. Apparently, he can’t get his mind around the possibility that someone might know more about this case than he does. For that matter, he can’t imagine that anyone might be able to offer a better idea about anything. What a tool.

Frank,
That’s exactly the question I submitted.

I believe that Cohen and Broder and other inside-the-Beltway pundits are willfully ignorant. I think they know what’s going on but act ignorant in order to deceive the public. People read them and believe them. It’s all a part of the plan, and they’re owned men. Wonder what Bush and boys have on them?

1. Libby obstructed the investigation to root out traitors of this country.
2. All those who defend him are also traitors of this country.

Now, if only we can get the spineless Dems to repeat these two lines across the airwaves …

Desertwind. Yes, I commented some time ago that jodi seems to be more than one person. There is also a clear pattern in the nature of the comments.

Not so long ago, EW asked jodi to explain her understanding of IIPA, the next comment from jodi changed voice dramatically. jodi is definately a right wing affiliate of some sort. I count three voices, one is more open minded and nicer and sometimes post a I don’t like Bush post, the other is a nasty mud slinger, and the third is the calm voice that has more command of issues that digs out of holes when cornered.

If jodi is one person, my oh my, is that an unfortunate personality.

Mostly, we all ignore jodi around here, although I think when one of the talking points gets posted it is appropiate to remind the board of jodi’s troll status, just for people new to blogs who might be passing through.

I’m increasingly thinking that the purpose of jodi is not only to cover the blog, but to deliberately try to insight nastyness from otherwise calm and credible commenters. It seems to me that during times when many people may be looking to the blogs for information on new items that the tone of jodi gets more petulant.

I think the goal of getting us to jump her ass is a clear objective, to make us look like a bunch of irrational, emotional wing nuts, to passersby who might otherwise get invested and stick around the blog.

I am thus more and more of the opinion that exhibiting extreem nastiness to jodi is to satify one goal of those who comment under the moniker. Best to politely and factually slap down, only when needed, and otherwise ignore.

Sorry to say that free, we’ve all had a good laugh at many, many of your slap downs, but I’m pretty sure the most vitriolic of those suits their adgenda just fine.

â€Objections to Jewish people and things,†acquart?

I don’t think so; our understanding of justice, for one thing, is overwhelmingly Jewish–there wouldn’t be any justice at all without the moderation and wisdom of the just, who happen to be Jewish, and have been Jewish (in our culture, anyway) for the past thousand years at least. Yes, our forms may be Roman or Anglo-Saxon, but the arts of judging fairly come from the readers of the Book.

Which makes Cohen’s tortured reasoning over the Libby case all the more perverse (because, in all fairness, Libby has been found guilty of serious felonies).

And so, in the analytical spirit, I do the unspeakable thing: I raise a question about the larger context of Libby’s role in the world of Washington today.

The Rich case is a prominent fact in this context, and the connections between Rich, Libby, and their respective cases ought to be explored, ought to be thought through. This is not an easy thing to do, by the way, given the fact that Rich’s own Presidential pardon moots the question of his innocence or guilt (and, for what it’s worth, I’ve always inclined towards the notion of his innocence–as I have in the case of Michael Milken, even more so in the case of Michael Milken).

And, whatever else has been going on in the life of Marc Rich, his intense support for current Israeli policy in the Middle East is a matter of consequential fact, as is well understood in Washington today by Democrats and Republicans alike.

I think the alignment of our foreign policy with Israel’s foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster, and I also think that Libby’s felonies, along with his politics, have contributed to this disaster. No one hereabouts seems very eager to explore this point, which is why I bother to point it out myself.

Richard Cohen looks like Yukon Cornelius but his writing is abominable.

Cohen: â€I’m just saying that when you get called before a grand jury and you are a target, there ought to be a crime involved.â€

Now wait a minute. It seems to me there are two possibilities:

You get hauled before a GJ because the prosecutor is investigating to try to determine if a crime took place.

a) You ARE a target. So is it okay to lie then, to prevent the prosecutor from determining whether there’s an underlying crime? If that’s the case, of course you’d lie; the prosecutor would never be able to prove the underlying crime, and under Cohen’s reasoning, no crime = no perjury prosecution. [Does he even follow the thread of his reasoning?]

b) You are NOT a target. Same question.

Is it your status as a â€target†that determines whether it’s okay to lie, ’cause in either case, if you’re lying, the prosecutor can’t get to the â€underlying crimeâ€?

All of these maroons are so simple-minded they [intentionally] can’t see the difference between investigating to see if a crime was committed, and proving the crime itself. Fitz was very clear about this distinction in his â€throwing sand in the umpire’s face†analogy. The Wingers have just seized on the â€underlying crime†meme to distract.

Emptywheel,

You’re right on count one. Cohen can’t say Bush wasn’t involved because a) it’s not true and b) the question clearly wasn’t just about the man himself but the Bush administration as a whole. Why didn’t the Bush administration come out into the open?

But you over-reach when you attack his point about the political basis of investigations. You say: â€Cohen is suggesting that nothing pertaining to political disagreement should ever go before a grand jury.†A fair reading of what he was saying is that politics shouldn’t be the only basis of the investigation. Do you really really really think his view includes letting people off for murder? If you do, you’re as stupid as he is. If you don’t you’re just being lazy and prancing around making sloppy and unhelpful arguments.

The difference presumably between any thoughtful critic of the White House and the Bush White House is the capacity to draw the line and to be fair and reasonable. To hack away just because you don’t like Mr. Cohen or because he’s made 10,000 previous stupid statements may make you feel better (as similar behavior no doubt does Mr. Cheney) but it makes you just like the people you attack– incapable of keeping your reason intact.

Do you really really really think his view includes letting people off for murder? If you do, you’re as stupid as he is. If you don’t you’re just being lazy and prancing around making sloppy and unhelpful arguments.

Oh!? Cohen draws the line at murder – where did he say that? Do YOU really really really think EW is putting words in Cohen’s mouth? Cohen speaks. EW interprets. That part about lazy and prancing around making sloppy and unhelpful arguments applies to you, not EW.

Since people have brought up the â€no underlying crime†part of the Clinton inquisition, can I cite one element of that which I think gets overlooked (and which, by his claims yesterday, ought to have enraged Richard Cohen)? The questions asked of Clinton — which he dodged/fudged/maybe faintly lied about — were questions that no one else 1) would have been asked and 2) confronted with, would have lied about. Sure, no one WANTS to confess to extra-marital fooling around, but if you’re in a position where you know if you lie you’re screwed, and you know there’s at least a chance the truth could come out…the average person is going to reluctantly tell the truth. Clinton didn’t because, given his position, such an admission might have been a devastating political blow (maybe not, based on actual public reaction, but few would have guessed that at the time). Thus, the Jones lawyers — with Starr’s team waiting in the wings — played Clinton’s political needs and maneuvered him into a minor technical falsehood (notice they never actually asked the question â€Was your member in Monica’s mouth?†— they knew that would have tipped him off). They CREATED legal jeopardy by political means.

So, why wasn’t Richard Cohen up in arms about THAT?

Cohen’s chat was horrible. I submitted about 6 questions, none were addressed. As others pointed out, he showed himself to be misinformed and arrogant. His chat was so loony toons that I wonder if WashPost.com would consider offering corrections to his responses. They won’t, of course, but that’s how off the mark he was. Like Broder, Cohen seems to be mailing it in. With â€liberals†like Cohen, who needs conservative columnists?

It is calling Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation the â€criminalization†of politics that murders critical judgment, and dismisses it barefoot and pregnant to the intellectual kitchen and laundry. If behavior displayed by Libby, Cheney and Rove becomes normal, then like the â€normal†political behavior of Schlozman, Gonzales or von Spakovsky, it will eat up our democracy as surely as wasp larvae devour that writhing caterpillar, with Mr. Cohen arguing until the end that even wasps need more lebensraum.

Several people leaked Ms. Plame’s identity, and thus, the identity of her cover organization(s). They all knew or should have known that her professional role was or could well be covert. There is no record that any of them made the least effort to inquire whether divulging her identity would risk precious resources. Consequently, they all risked the lives or livelihoods of all those Ms. Plame dealt with. They are all suspected criminals; so far, it is only Mr. Libby who has been tried and convicted, for crimes that shield others from his fate.

As it turns out, they all worked within the same closed circle and may have learned about Ms. Plame, and why leaking her name would be useful to the OVP, from the same sources. This has all the earmarks of an orchestrated leak, circular by design, to make it harder to find the starting point. This is not a leak about govt corruption, that spreads from one truth teller to the next and which ultimately becomes public. These are leaks to spread govt corruption.

In the end, as investigators circled, even Mr. Rove told a careful version of the truth, after four or five visits to the grand jury. Mr. Libby chose not to, even though Mr. Fitzgerald gave him as many chances as he gave Mr. Rove. His fate is his own doing; it is not the result of a biased prosecutor criminalizing the ordinary and routine. Had Mr. Schlozman been assigned the Libby case, as his first prosecution/trial, it would be harder to make that claim.

In other words, lying to the FBI, in and of itself, is an â€underlying crimeâ€.

Bless you, Frank Probst.

Comstock, Matalin, and other Libby enablers must assume that ’their version of Libby’s story’ will create expectations that Libby can be dismissed without public outrage — as Ollie North, and the rest of the Iran-Contra group were. (I am still catching up on Iran-Contra, but it was obviously a precursor to PlameGate.)

When I ask people about Iran-Contra, they give long, convoluted explanations that are fairly vague. There’s really no ’victim’ in the narrative. In contrast, Plame is super-simple: (1) CIA agent (who protects me) was (2) ’outed and betrayed’, by (3) ’people at the top of the Bush Administration’ (i.e., people who were supposed to have protected me). The very people who betrayed Plame then (4) ’lied about the betrayal – to the FBI!’ (i.e., they lied to the very same people who would protect me if I were the victim of a crime).

Shorter: â€The people who were supposed to protect me, betrayed me twice — first, by outing Plame, then by lying about the betrayal to the FBI. Therefore, these are dangerous, evil people who cannot be trusted, nor respected.â€

The pushback and outrage that you report in response to Cohen’s remarks and chat are further evidence of my hunch that the neocons and Bu$hCo assume that they can pull the same ’pardon’ behavior L’Affair Plame that they were able to pull in Iran-Contra.

Huge, h-u-g-e error in judgement.
When I hear people talk about Iran-Contra, they don’t really identify a victim, nor do they seem to be feel that it was personally threatening to them.
In contrast, too many Americans have a personal experience of betrayed (by a bad manager, or a lousy stockbroker, or some other experience). A sense of personal betrayal lies at the core of the Plame investigation. And it’s a double-betrayal: betrayal by the highest levels of government, and also by the press (who were supposed to be keeping an eye on government, but can no longer be trusted to do do so.)

The fact that Cohen, and others in the press, don’t seem to grasp this very simple set of relationships is stupifying. As Friar William often points out here, many things really are simple. This is one of them.

Reading Walton’s latest filing: https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2005cr0394-373

Anyone know how often a judge will bother filing something like this? It seems pretty extraordinary to me. I would assume that most judges just let the trial record speak for itself.

RIchard Cohen is best read with the lights off.

zimmerman:
I’m just saying that when you get called before a grand jury and you are a target, there ought to be a crime involved. More than that, in this government, in our government, we ought to make sure that the basis of it is not a political disagreement.

Cohen said that.
EW was wondering how far he’d extend that line of (non)reasoning: would he allow killing a political opponent, because it was political in nature.
What part of this did you not understand?

The craziest exchange in the chat is when someone quotes Cohen’s own comment from earlier in the chat, then Cohen denies he ever said it. That’s some quality craziness right there.

New York: In this chat you just said the following: â€In Libby’s case, I don’t know the reason for the crime. I don’t know whether or not he was telling the truth and simply forgot he leaked this information — it’s a remote possibility but I don’t buy it.†With all due respect, whether you buy it or not means squat. A jury of Libby’s peers bought it. They sat through a trial and weighed the evidence and found Libby guilty without a reasonable doubt. Isn’t it a little arrogant for you to substitute your judgment for those that sat through the entire trial?

Richard Cohen: I didn’t say that. I said I agree that he lied. I agreed with the jury. This is not a technical thing. I thought he was guilty. I thought he lied. Put that in your â€squat.â€

>>EW was wondering how far he’d extend that line of (non)reasoning: would he allow killing a political opponent, because it was political in nature.

Fair enough. I’ve re-read it and it makes more sense now.

Does anyone know what Cohen meant about real estate being better in the dark? I mean, most people want to see the house before they buy it, don’t they? I’ve never seen anyone do a walk-through blindfolded.

Margaret: It worked for me with no trouble.

Thanks, I did, from another site, and, I read the footnotes which are hilarious, as usual! Walton doesn’t like his words to be taken out of context, and he has a delightful way to let you know that! His legal thoroughness is too compliacted for me to understand (IANAL) so, I’ll wait for the resident genius (genii) to help me. Thanks, to all of you who know so much about the rule of law. I respect it more and more for the good that it can do.

Ahhhh, freepatriot

you have made Dismayed’s speculation come true, much to his chargrin.

And just when the conversation had risen a bit.

margaret,

â€I Robot†(Get someone to explain please.)

Posted by: KSC | June 21, 2007 at 17:02

Great post. How does Richard Cohen reconcile this? He cannot. He doesn’t give a shit.

He should not be allowed to call himself a progressive.

(Mechanical lungs breathing into a digital aspirator)

â€Richard, you are my son!â€