Sideshows: Gonzales-gate and Scotter-gate
Two issues that the ProConPundit believes are really detracting congressional and executive attention away from more important issues are Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the whole Valerie Wilson Plame/Scooter Libby ordeal. A recent Chicago Tribune editorial states well the folly of the Democrats to use the time and energy of their decisive victory last fall poorly. The ProConPundit believes that the political firings of politically appointed judges is a non story. Change the way judges are selected and I am with you. But when political hacks get dumped, move on.
As for Valerie Plame and Scooter Libby, here’s the deal. Valerie’s top secret CIA appointment was driving a desk at CIA offices. Her husband, the venerable ambassador, is a self declared drunken womanizer. Why should we care about this?

I think its peculiar for Libby to be charged and convicted when the underlying crime was never prosecuted. However, he did lie under oath. You may recall that no one was ever charged with the underlying crime of Watergate. No burglars ever went to jail. That didn’t save Dean, Colson, Haldeman, & Erlichman. To my dear, kindred, conservative friends: we either think perjury is a bad thing or we don’t. If we do, than anyone who is convicted of it should pay the price. If we don’t, then we shouldn’t have wanted Clinton put out of office. If we don’t think perjury is wrong, its okay with me. Let me know how you explain that to your children and grandchildren!

These side shows are distractions from Iraq, crumbling infrastructure and healthcare.

The Gonzales soap opera
Chicago Ttribune Editorial

August 1, 2007

The mystery that has captivated official Washington this summer -- well, OK, the Democrats in Congress -- is a tale of intrigue and conflict at the highest levels of government. What happened, the Dems want to know, when Alberto Gonzales paid a nighttime visit in 2004 to the hospital bedside of a groggy then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft?Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, apparently tried to persuade Ashcroft, under sedation and recovering from surgery, to reapprove a terrorist surveillance program run by the National Security Agency that was about to expire. Or so says a former top Justice official. Ashcroft wouldn't do the reauthorizing. All the while, other Justice officials reportedly were considering whether to resign over their legal objections to the program.Ever since word of the bedside visit surfaced in congressional testimony, Democrats have been baying like obsessed soap opera fans who missed an episode: They want to know what happened in that room, detail by detail.

They want to know, they say, because they suspect Gonzales may not have been completely truthful in his testimony about the program this year. But we suspect there are other reasons: They'd like to expose discord over the program within the Justice Department to bolster their skepticism over changes the president is urging in the surveillance law. And they'd like to further discredit Gonzales and force him to resign as attorney general.Last week, the saga of the bedside visit took a surprise twist. FBI Director Robert Mueller seemed to contradict Gonzales' testimony that the visit wasn't about the NSA surveillance program in question. Democrats went ballistic, suggesting Gonzales had deliberately misled Congress. Or did he? As The New York Times reported Sunday, it may be that Gonzales was telling the truth, that the visit concerned a different national security program.Now Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and three other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are asking the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to probe whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the NSA program. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has said he also supports that move.And a group of Democratic House members is calling for an investigation and talking about the impeachment of Gonzales.Congress has every right to demand answers, to subpoena witnesses, as it has. It has plenty of power to probe the 2004 hospital bedside meeting, the firing of U.S. attorneys and anything else it pleases. And to tell the public what it learns.What Congress doesn't need -- what the country doesn't need -- is another special counsel with a blank checkbook and an open-ended agenda. Those who doubt that should revisit the legal bloodletting of the 1980s and 1990s, when special prosecutors ran amok, racking up huge bills and consuming lawmakers' time.That's why Congress allowed the federal law that authorized independent counsel investigations to lapse in 1999. Both Republicans and Democrats were frustrated with the cost, length and lack of accountability of investigations. How quickly lawmakers forget.The law expired, but the authority remained with the attorney general to appoint a special counsel when it is warranted.This case does not meet that test.We say this not to protect Gonzales. This page argued in April that Gonzales should resign for his incompetent administration of the office, particularly his handling of the firing of the federal prosecutors last year.But a special counsel? Impeachment? Do Democrats really think the larger public is up in arms because Gonzales may have gotten lawyerly cute in answering their questions? Get real.The Bush administration allowed politics to trump public interest at the Justice Department. Democrats are in danger of making the same mistake on Capitol Hill.