“‘My pledge to you and your government, but more important to the people of Mexico, is I’ll work as hard as I possibly can to pass comprehensive immigration reform,’ Bush said during a sun-splashed arrival ceremony that opened two days of meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in this Yucatan Peninsula tourist haven.”
How touching to witness a leader vowing to keep a promise he made to his people. Viva El Presidente.
Category Archives: Politics
A President's Pledge to His People
“‘My pledge to you and your government, but more important to the people of Mexico, is I’ll work as hard as I possibly can to pass comprehensive immigration reform,’ Bush said during a sun-splashed arrival ceremony that opened two days of meetings with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in this Yucatan Peninsula tourist haven.”
How touching to witness a leader vowing to keep a promise he made to his people. Viva El Presidente.
Scooter/Stewart Similarities
Denis Collins, juror in Scooter Libby’s trial, said that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was the fall guy. “‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?'” is how Collins described the pickle jurors found themselves in during Libby’s scuttlebutt-driven trial. Still, it did not prevent them from convicting Libby, and rendering conflicting verdicts, to boot.
Not that he was a sympathetic sort, but CIA director George ‘Slam-Dunk’ Tenet was also the fall guy for Cheney, Bush, Rove, and Rice. They’re good at letting the minions take the wrap for their infractions.
More crucially, the “crime” for which Libby was convicted was also the crime for which Martha Stewart went to jail: lying to the FBI. Not for leaking the identity of former (so-called) classified CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Or, in Stewart’s case, insider trading.) Richard Armitage did that.
Where a prosecutor could never hope to prove his case in a court of law, he goes looking for other charges. He manufactures crimes. If he can’t get a defendant —usually a high-profile one —on the facts; the prosecutor will often get him for lying. After all, if the prosecutor has not been able to prove his case, this must mean the hapless accused has been lying, right?
Republicans failed to protest Stewart’s sham of a trial, but have been perfectly capable of articulating why Scooter Libby’s conviction is suspect. But that’s to be expected. Stewart is a rock-ribbed Democrat; Scooter a Republican. Democrats are as partisan.
Let’s hope Cheney cashes in some Halliburton shares to help defray the costs of Libby’s $6-million defense.
A Corrupt Politician Resigns—But Not in the US
The AP has reported that the Bahamas’ “Immigration Minister Shane Gibson resigned Sunday night in a flap over his relationship with Anna Nicole Smith.
Photos recently appeared in a Bahamas newspaper showing Gibson in bed with the former Playboy Playmate and embracing her. Both were fully clothed, but the pictures stoked a controversy because Gibson had fast-tracked Smith’s application for permanent residency on the island chain.
‘I want to apologize to all persons who may in any way have been offended by anything that I have said, done, or perceived to have said or done,’ Gibson said on state television.”
And the busy bodies partaking in the Anna Nicole Smith shout fest on Faux News have not stopped castigating the law in the Bahamas. They’ve also had plenty to say about the ability of the Indian reservation to investigate the death that occurred on their territory. (Yes, cable cockroaches have already “sans evidence and in contradiction to the coroner’s findings” raised the specter of a murder.) What American chauvinism! And what blindness given the reality of American justice.
There are many good books detailing the endemic horrors of our legal system: The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Constitutional Chaos–these are some of the best. The case of District Attorney Michael Nifong of the Duke “rape” case fame is not a fluke. Oh, Nifong has yet to resign or to be nudged in that direction.