The Jurors Need A Sit-Down With Larry

Speaks volumes about Fitzgerald’s competence. To get a conviction with nimrods like this is further evidence that he had Scooter dead to rights. This gal is a lawyer? Man, thanks for the warning. I wouldn’t trust her to turn the faucet in the kitchen on.

Here, here, Larry! Right on target, as usual.

I’ve had enough of “seems like a nice guy” to LAST A LIFETIME!

Wasn’t it The Shrub just a short while back who was to be our favorite beer bud? What a joke.

Well Larry you beat me to
“nimrods”
To paraphrase your colleague and friend, Pat Lang – Maybe we deserve the Republic we got.

I agree completely with your NPR assessment regarding what this verdict says – and also your ablove comment – this was a testament to Fitzgerald’s ability..

Someone needs to explain the domino effect to those people that have sympathy for the devil.

Watching the rerun of Olberman and The Collins guy is blathering on; sort of interesting how “dramatic”, and into their 15 minutes these folks (the ones rushing forward) seem to be…it’s pretty much evident of the overriding “cult of personality” aspects of our society. I guess I should be more kind, and try to imagine myself in their shoes, but honestly- it’s interesting how they are so into discussing the “human” aspect of the defendant.

I’d feel more comfortable if their language was focused on “innocent until proven guilty.” Instead, it’s all sounding very emotive, affected by the weeping Wells.

Are we American folks all so easily persuaded by spin? Such victims of marketing? Am I just too cynical?

I would like to think, that presented with evidence and testimony, my mind would be consistently in “SKEPTIC” mode. Both in response to the prosecution and the defense. That’s where the deliberations process comes into play.

Just almost creepy, for lack of a better word, exactly what the jurors have had to say, and the manner in which they’ve expressed themselves…

The Ann lady has been portrayed by Collins as being the one who “warned” fellow jurors that their mind set seemed to be about establishing Libby’s guilt. how odd her comments now, especially throwing out Presidential pardon- so quickly!

don’t most think, post verdict/final decision- “you’re convicted. you’re going to sentencing and jail.”- ?

Where is ANY expression of horror/queasiness at lying under oath to the grand jury, or OUTRAGE at the obstruction of justice? how sad they bought the poor, pitiful “scapegoat” stuff, but still, thankfully had to follow the LETTER of the law.

Gee, I wish I could lie under oath and get the get a out of jail free sympathy card. But then again, I’m am not in government f@#$ing over the american people and comprimising intell agents.
Larry is right,The juror on Obberman’s show was a dunce and the Washington Post pundit who was sitting beside her going on and on about how this wasn’t a crime and should never have been investigated.Jesus what a fucking hack!!!what kind of spell is on these idiots?
Clinton lied about his PRIVATE life and it was impeachable, these bastards blow an American security assets cover and it hunky dory. man that’s rich!!!

for the last time….Who leaked this identity and why aren’t they pursuing this treasonous action instead of the fluff of lying about it? God this is so frustrating….I need some wine

Mr Johnson and/or Susan –

Mr Libby’s trial is over (for now). His trial didn’t get to WHO leaked Ms Plame’s CIA status. Will the CIA again ask for an investigation as to WHO leaked?

peg,

I’m sorry to say that the answer to your question is probably no. The Agency bureaucracy considers itself to have done its duty by the original referral to the Department of Justice. Once it’s in Justice’s court, they’re out of it, except to provide Justice access to discovery. And, depending on how the Agency feels about the material that Justice wants access to, i.e., if they feel that the Bureau is on a fishing expedition into areas that might give the Bureau an advantage in the bilateral turf wars, they may not be particularly forthcoming, at that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDaRFf7Cd6M

My dad just sent this to me, and I spat my wine all over the keyboard. Very funny.

That juror in the Libby trial asked the right question: where’s Karl?

-s

thank you, Retired.

I saw the interview with Chris.
Looked at another way,the jurors desire for a pardon can be used to diffuse the rights claim that the jurors were all ‘lefty Libby/Bush haters’.
Also I think Mathews did a good job explaining what a pardon really means:
ADMISSION OF GUILT.

I am reminded of my brother, an airline pilot who recently lost his retirement.

When discussing the situation, inevitably, the perpetrators names come up, to which, others might pop out with, but he (she) is such a nice person.

Like night follows day, he will then agree that, indeed, their demeanor can be “nice”, but when it came to the benefits they were entrusted to protect, they acted as cowards, as opposed to being nice/not nice. Two entirely different metrics, not to be confused with each other.

It is as relevant as commenting about someone who gave away your habeas corpus by rejoining that they always dressed well, like as if that makes up for their treason.

Someone needs to explain to this foolish woman, once her 15 minutes of fame is over, that “nice” people don’t lie to a Grand Jury. What kind of an idiot finds a person guilty of a crime one day and wants them pardoned the next? Please do not inflict this fool on us again.

Everyone is equal in the eyes of the law in this country, except well-groomed upper middle class individuals who can afford the best defense money can buy — they are entitled to great sympathy when in the dock, with the reasonable doubt standard stretched to the breaking point.

Once upon a time the pressures of intelligence work in our society which remains faintly contemptuous of career government service (even in those branches dedicated to national security) drove thinking individuals to drink. Watching the spectacle of elite opinion boo-hooing “poor” Scooter Libby, who cavalierly betrayed an intelligence officer and a painstakingly assembled covert operation, must be driving our best and brightest to Plain Old Pearson’s and ultimately to Blackwater in droves.

A Question: There has long been speculation about Ms. Plame’s status as it applies to the IIPA, and I thank you for repeatedly clearing that up, but we have never really heard who exposed/leaked the Brewster Jennings entity.

Exposure of that entity, especially if still active as a CIA front, would appear potentially more damaging than the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s name. Wouldn’t all active, and past agents be compromised? Wouldn’t all those foreign nationals who may have had involvement with anyone in that entity be suspect in their native countries?

Also, the only reason to expose B-J would seem to be retaliation against the CIA itself rather than merely Ambassador Wilson. Any thoughts or info?

If indeed these jurors want to see cheney, rove and bush in court for conspiracy and treason charges, then they need to stfu about wanting pardons for felons.

Quite frankly I’ve found this Libby business very complicated, and a bit boring. Thankfully, Stephen Colbert explains it to me in this video:
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2007/03/stephen-colbert-explains-libby-verdict.html

I think that they blew her cover less to get Joe and more to destroy the operation of intell on Iran. They want to play their game on Iran and it is very difficult to do that when the CIA has proper facts about what is going on in Iran.

You idiots are beyond hope. You have no ability to answer even the most fundamental questions about this pathetic case. I’ve posted them here before and they remain unanswered.

Your utterly insane position that this was some type of White House plot to undermine Wilson is so tired.

How do you UNDERMINE someone with the TRUTH!!

Wilson’s wife was NOT undercover nor covert. She drove herself to the CIA parking every day of the week. Does that sound like an UNDERCOVER agent.

Is it typical behavior for an UNDERCOVER agent to make POLITCAL CONTRIBUTIONS in her own name and therefore in the PUBLIC DOMAIN?

Does the CIA normally let the spouse of UNDERCOVER agents write OP/ED articles in the New York Times?

Wilson wrote “The Politics of Truth”. What a joke that is! Everything out of Wilson’s has been proved to be a complete lie.

Bush should pardon Libby today.

Dear Goldwater, if you had written that post in ’03 or even ’04 many would have stepped forward to engage you in a discussion aimed at getting to the truth by sourcing out the facts. Today, when Fitzgerald’s very indictment lays out the answers to your charges it would seem you find some solace in retaining your arrogant ignorance. So, today, your post simply lays out your choice to undermine this Country’s judicial system.

It seems that the two people we haven’t heard from on this matter are Valerie Plame and anyone from the CIA coming out and actually talking about this. That should speak volumes about her covert status, don’t ya think???!!!

What I find intersting is how all of these pundits on the news and a few of the posters here, incessently rant about Valerie Plame not being covert. Like any of these people would really know the inner workings of the CIA and actually have access to that information.

So to all the pundits out there that don’t have true inner access and knowledge of this information, and grandstand on tv or blogs about what they think they know or have been told, shrouded by the super duper, double super secret background, STFU.

Joe Wilson himself said the other night on Olbermann, that even he doesn’t know everything about his own wife’s career. Again, if she wasn’t covert to begin with, then why ask the DOJ to investigate?

We don’t need to know every sordid secret and detail that happens in our government’s most secretive agencies and that’s ok with me; there’s just some things we don’t need to know. We should be grateful to those that do things for our country that ensure our freedoms. My guess is that the average American will NEVER know the sacrifices that have been made on behalf of all of us.

That’s why I like this website. Larry, Susan, Pat et al, ya’lls writings has been informative to the average Joan Taxpayer like me.

‘Nice guy’?
I hear that the guy who got shot in the face still thinks Cheney is a nice guy.

Not that I am equating Scooter with him, but according to his young secretary…Hitler was a nice, kind, grandfatherly man in person. Not a bad sort at all. That’s the reason justice wears a blindfold.
Someone should inform these people. John

Right on, John. Every time someone has ever told me that so-and-so is a “nice person” because he/she loves animals, I remind them that Hitler also loved animals.

The jurors were seduced by Scooter’s courtroom demeanor — which goes to show that how one behaves, particularly if one doesn’t testify, can have a huge influence. And a false one at that.

AND this jury never saw the VICTIMS of Scooter Libby’s actions. The jurors, shockingly, have not mentioned the serious offense of outing a CIA employee. Nor are they apparently cognizent of the destruction of the elaborate Brewster-Jennings cover that was destroyed by Libby et al.’s actions — along with the “assets” that Valerie had cultivated god knows where. And that those “assets” may have had their own lives ruined, if not terminated.

Again, I’m grateful for their ability to reach the proper verdicts, but I do think they should study up on the rest of the story before they open their mouths about pardoning LIbby.

Ann Redington only knows the smiling, cheerful, and amicable Libby whose foot was tethered to the dock after Libby had gone into a grand jury and lied, obstructed and impeded the investigation.

How else does she expect him to be?

Doh!!!

Note to Ann Redington:

Nice people, law abiding citizens, do not throw shovels of sand in the eyes of the umpire so that s/he cannot figure out what has happened.

every time i’ve been royally ripped off i’ve recieved that “nice person” smile as they pushed me out the door.

“we’re smarter and bigger than you and theres not a thing you can do about it.”

yet…

Gee, I didn’t know her job was to decide how much to hate Scooter. I thought her job was to decide if he did what the prosecutor claimed or not. She did that. Lighten up.

Gee, I didn’t know her job was to decide how much to hate Scooter. I thought her job was to decide if he did what the prosecutor claimed or not. She did that. Lighten up.

“Not to love Der Fuehrer is a big disgrace…”
Der Fuehrer’s Face by Spike Jones and the City Slickers
http://www.ocap.ca/songs/fuehrers.html

This is about the third or fourth time around with this sorry dreck for me.
First Nixon. Then Ollie North. Then Reagan’s Funeral. Now Libby.
Everytime some sorry fubar GOoPer steps on his dick, drops dead or otherwise runs afoul of the US Code or karma, the Mighty Wurlitzer and the Right Wing Noise Machine goes into overdrive to saturate the zeitgeist with Sympathy For The Perpshit. I feel it, but I no longer trust it.

Screw Libby. Turn up the heat, sweat him for a while and see if he wants to make a deal.
Sure it’ll make me sad…soooo sad, but that’s my problem. I’ll just have to suck it up and get over it.

“When Herr Goebbels says, “We own der world und space”
We HEIL! HEIL! Right in Herr Goebbels’ face”

Bertrand Russell wrote a definitive essay called “Nice People”- in which he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that “nice people” are responsible for most of the world’s evils.

“The day of nice people, I fear, is nearly over; two things are killing it. The first is the belief that there is no harm in being happy, provided no one else is the worse for it; the second is the dislike of humbug, a dislike which is quite as much aesthetic as moral. Both these revolts were encouraged by the War, when the nice people in all countries were securely in control, and in the name of the highest morality induced the young people to slaughter one another. When it was all over the survivors began to wonder whether lies and misery inspired by hatred constituted the highest virtue. I am afraid it may be some time before they can again be induced to accept this fundamental doctrine of every really lofty ethic.

The essence of nice people is that they hate life as manifested in tendencies to co-operation, in the boisterousness of children, and above all in sex, with the thought of which they are obsessed. In a word, nice people are those who have nasty minds. [p. 156]“

Two points need to be made concerning the Plame outing and the attendant legal case involving Libby and the rest.

1)Scooter Libby and his crew probably believed they could get away with betraying Ms. Plame because- – -another Neo-con sack of shit- – -Namely- Richard Pearle had done the very same thing and gotten away without being indicted for the crime he certainly committed nor – suffering the proper opprobrium that should have followed such perfidy! Pearle, very publically, not only denounced a very important Case Officer actions, in of all countries- Iraq, he did so by name! This, coupled with the inertia of delusional triumphalism that cocooned the administration in the early days of the war, led this crew to considered themselves untouchable as it related to the crime of outing an Intelligence Officer whose husband had the temerity to challenge one of the central lies propagated during the run-up to Invasion of Iraq. There was no anticipation, whatsoever, that they might find themselves being scrutinized in the hostile political climate they now find themselves in.

2) Patrick Fitzgerald’s strategy and thinking concerning the Plame case was flawed in the extreme. Instead of focusing on the intent of the Law protecting Intelligence operatives, Fitzgerald lowered his gaze and sought to, instead, make the violation of the mechanics of the Grand Jury his primary focus. Certainly Libby and most likely the rest would have perjured themselves and sought to obstruct justice but that should have been a side show. A clear reading of the Intelligence Identities Protection act should have demanded that Fitzgerald seek indictments of the lot of them It would have then been up to the Grand Jury to weigh the evidence presented and decide for themselves who should and should not be indicted. Given the power of a prosecutor, Fitzgerald could have allowed the jury the caveat of reading the law(see paragraph a) Intelligence Addends Protection Act) in question and deciding whether an individual brought before the Grand Jury had 1) Inadvertently 2) Stupidly or 3) with malice aforethought- outed Ms. Plame. In this scenario Armitage and most likely Fleischer would have walked out of the Grand Jury legally unscathed. The rest, however, Libby, Bad-hip Novak, Rove and most importantly Cheney(Does anyone believe Scooter would have betrayed Plame on his own!) would have certainly been indicted. Lawyers for the individuals indicted would have then had the impossible task of separating their clients from the actions, all of which were intentional and with malice aforethought as it related to the betrayal of Ms. Plame. Instead of debating a pardon of Scooter Libby, the chattering classes would be speculating on who George Bush would pick to replace convicted felon- Dick Cheney.

Thanks for sharing SunshineJim!

I would like the Dems to STOP being such NICE PEOPLE too! Called Sen. Reid’s office today – basically told to “talk to your local state reps”. I told her ‘NO”!

It is CONGRESS who is ALSO THE PROBLEM.
Bought and sold by the highest bidder.

The American People, I hope, are finally waking up to this NIGHTMARE.

WE must (continue)to be the change we seek… beltway folks lose their souls apparently _ ONCE IN OFFICE!

I recall that Brewster-Jennings was outed as a consequence of Valerie Wilson being identified as a CIA agent. It was the front company that used while she was doing undercover work as an “energy consultant”. Undercover doesn’t mean nonexistent as a participant in society; it means that her association with the CIA was not known to the people she was spying on. In a recent interview, Valerie Wilson’s own mother did not know that she was a CIA operative.

Here it is. From today’s goddam New York Times:

===

Ms. [Diane] Plame, Ms. [Valerie Plame] Wilson’s mother, recalled that when her daughter was in her senior year at Pennsylvania State University, she sent her an advertisement for work at the C.I.A. Ms. Wilson became an undercover operative in Europe; officially she was an “energy consultant.” It was perhaps the riskiest type of undercover work, as she could not in a pinch fall back on being an employee of the United States.

Mother and daughter never again talked about work.

“I hear these people saying, ‘Oh, everyone knew she was undercover,’ ” Ms. Plame said. “Well, she did not enlighten her mother or her family. No, she did not.”

[snip]

As the news of her blown cover broke, Ms. Wilson was headed to Chicago. Her best friend from childhood was a lawyer there and had never known Ms. Wilson was an agency operative.

“Valerie had lived this lie for so long that it was hard for her friend,” Ms. Plame recalled. “But they’re like sisters, and they came out of this as close as ever.”

My good news of the day. Representative Waxman has a hearing on the Plame leak scheduled for 16 March.

Goldwater is just trying to get our panties in a wad by lobbing B.S. grenades. If he REALLY believes the FOXNEWS spin on all this then he is already a member of the “Bush Davidians” and is apparently waiting for the mother ship to take him away.

Goldwater, go take your meds …

I’m not sure someone’s demeanor in a courtroom is a reliable indicator of whether someone is ‘nice’. What he didn’t pistol whip her in the middle of the trial? Gee what a nice guy. There are people in jail facing life for $10 of drugs, there are people in prison for shoplifting $5 of goods. F@ck Scooter Libby.