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Breaking News: Mr. Cheney Has a Heart After All

Don't you love it when the NY Slimes speaks in the passive voice!

Still, liberal critics of the administration had a field day with the trial. They are hoping the Democrats who now control Congress will use the case to investigate Mr. Cheney’s role further. Mr. Schumer, who was among the first to call for a special prosecutor in the case, suggested in an interview that they might.

No need to "question experts" in order to write up this particular paragraph. All that reporter SHERYL GAY STOLBERG had to do in this case was consult the demeanor of her colleagues in the newsrooms she shares with them.

The reference to Schumer is interesting, however. Clarice Feldman, who has written extensively at Just One Minute and American Thinker on the Scooter Libby case believes that Schumer worked a behind the scenes deal with James Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General, to agree to bring Patrick Fitzgerald onto the case. As a very relevant aside, both James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald prosecuted a case against Mark Rich, with Libby as Rich's attorney. They lost, Scooter won and the ruling in this case later formed the basis of the pardon for Mark Rich by President Clinton.

Meanwhile, Schumer, now, is all aglow to begin all kinds of investigations into high administration officials, the higher, the better.

“I think there is a view in the public that Libby was the fall guy,” Mr. Schumer said, “and I do think we will look at how the case shows the misuse of intelligence both before and after the war in Iraq.”

The successful prosecution of Libby has apparently merely whetted his appetite for larger game. Although the misuse of intelligence in such a regard seems like a loaded phrase. Whose intelligence? I certainly feel that mine has been misused watching the process of this trial.


Interestingly, now that it looks like it will be hard times for Cheney, the NY Times finally decides to show a softer side of the man:

On a personal level, friends of the vice president say the trial has been deeply painful for him. Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney were all but inseparable — Ms. Matalin has called the former aide “Cheney’s Cheney” — and often started their days by riding to work together. Mr. Libby accompanied the vice president almost everywhere he went, and Mr. Cheney made clear his high professional and personal regard for his aide, even playing host to a book party for him in 2002 at his official residence. Alan K. Simpson, a Republican former senator from Mr. Cheney’s home state, Wyoming, said he saw Mr. Cheney over Christmas and asked how he was doing. He took the answer as a kind of oblique reference to the Libby case.

“He said, ‘I’m fine, I’m O.K., I have people I trust around me — it’s the same old stuff, Al,’ ” Mr. Simpson recalled.

Another friend of Mr. Cheney’s, Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman, said the verdict had “got to be heartbreaking for the vice president.” But Mr. Weber said he wished Mr. Cheney would explain himself.

“I don’t think he has to do a long apologia,” Mr. Weber said, “but I think he should say something, just to pierce the boil a little bit.”

Yes, American public, the NYTimes finally feels it can admit that Cheney actually has friends and a heart as well. Surprise, surprise. They've kept it well concealed from their audience until now.

Finally, three further links: Sweetness and Light fisks Fitz language, showing how he sows confusion and obfuscates in his legal language in order to mislead. It's an interesting study because it has been a consistent part of the methodology he has used throughout the ordeal of this trial.

An audiofile of Senator Thompson's sad reaction to the news of Libby's guilty verdict.

And Clarice Feldman, takes on the role of Rome's Servilia, calling for justice for Scooter Libby.

Labels: Cheney, Schumer, Scooter Libby

posted by Alcibiades @ 2:31 AM