The Political Chase

Crime Does Pay

Scooter Libby may end up quite wealthy if he keeps his fundraising efforts up. But, he may have a hard time spending any of it until he is about 85 years old. Too bad.

Friends and supporters of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby have raised $2 million to help him pay his legal bills…The Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust hopes to raise $5 million to $6 million, or more, said Barbara Comstock, a Republican strategist and a member of the fund’s steering committee.

Technorati Tags : Scooter+Libby, Plamegate, politics

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President Creates Cabinet Position to Coordinate Scandals

From the Onion…

"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush’s plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

The Scandal Secretary will log all wiretaps and complaints of prisoner abuse, coordinate paid-propaganda efforts, eliminate redundant payoffs and bribes, oversee the appointment of unqualified political donors to head watchdog agencies, control all leaks and other high-level security breaches, and oversee the disappearance of Iraq reconstruction funds. He will also be responsible for issuing all official denials that laws have been broken.

"Many of the current scandals in Washington are crucial to the success of my priorities for the nation," Bush said. "The Department of Corruption will safeguard these important misdeeds."

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card characterized the president’s announcement as part of a larger effort to usher in a "new era of scandal management."

"The entire DCBI budget will come from private donors and investors, through an illegal slush fund," he said. "The money we’ll save by eliminating redundancies and reducing scandal-related overhead will come back to citizens tenfold in the form of offshore corporate tax savings."

The Scandal Secretary will choose the elected official or business leader who will assume full responsibility for each scandal once it reaches fruition. His department will pen all tearful apologies and plea agreements and make all necessary arrangements for the designated scapegoat’s transition to a think tank, consultancy, law-partner position, or, if unavoidable, cursory stint in a minimum-security prison. Scapegoats who cannot be placed will be given oversight positions within the Department of Corruption itself.

Hat tip to Kos

Technorati Tags : State+of+the+Union, Bush+Administration, politics, corruption, scandals, George+Bush

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It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

The Plame Wilson matter has been quiet to say the least. Granted, the setting of the trial date for Scooter Libby and his attorneys’ attempts to gather information reporters submitted in the investigation, are recent with the latter not holding much water. But, from the MSM perspective it is a non-issue, which may lead some to believe Karl Rove has escaped the grasp of Patrick Fitzgerald. Quite to the contrary according to former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega. De la Vega opines in great detail, at TomDispatch, that the show is definitely not over; the fuse for the grand fireworks display is waiting to torched.

For Karl Rove, no news from the Plame case — Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA agent — is definitely not good news. Seismic activity is notoriously silent, so we may not be hearing any rumblings at the moment. But speaking as a former prosecutor, I believe it highly likely that, just below the surface, the worlds of Karl Rove and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, shifting like tectonic plates, are about to collide. As was true with Vice President Cheney’s top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, charged with obstruction of justice and lying to a federal agent as well as to the grand jury, Rove might not be charged with the leak itself. I am confident, however, that Rove will not leave this party empty-handed. He will, at the very least, almost certainly be charged with making false statements to an FBI agent. Here’s why.

For starters, the evidence that Rove deliberately lied to the FBI is overwhelming.

Read More

Technorati Tags : Plamegate, Rovegate, Karl+Rove, Plame, Wilson, Scooter+Libby, Patrick+Fitzgerald, Dick+Cheney

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Trial Set for Scooter Libby

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton set Scooter Libby’s trial date Scooter Libby’s trial date for January 2007. How convenient the date is - two months after the mid-term elections.

Technorati Tags : Scooter+Libby, Plamegate, Patrick+Fitzgerald, politics

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NASA launched the wrong rocket

Is there anyone in the Bush Administration that is not a crook, liar, or thief? The Washington Post reports that yet another Bush apointeee, the NASA Inspector General is in trouble. Remember Inspector Generals are investigators, so this is the same as the fox watching the hen house.

An FBI-led watchdog agency has opened an investigation into multiple complaints accusing NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb of failing to investigate safety violations and retaliating against whistle-blowers. Most of the complaints were filed by current and former employees of his own office.

Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.

The Executive Branch is literally out of control and in a tail-spinning nose dive.

Technorati Tags : NASA, Robert+Cobb, George+Bush, Bush+Administration, corruption, politics, investigations, inspector+general

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Cheney, Libby, the CIA and Niger

Murray Waas has a piece in The National Journal which should be rather unsettling to Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby. The CIA definitively informed Cheney and Libby that they clearly found without merit the allegations that Saddam Hussein attempted to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger. This evolves from a June 17, 2003 letter that CIA analysts wrote to George Tenet, the former Director, Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom recipient), which in turn was promptly proffered to the Office of the Vice President.

This piece yields at least three significant items:

• Substantially puts a greater focus on Dick Cheney’s knowledge, activities, and requests of the CIA as it directly relates to Plamegate — the purposeful intent to destroy former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
• Knocks Scooter Libby’s defense counselors out of the park in their attempts to portray Libby as too busy and too important to remember the “minutiae” of any discussion regarding Valerie Plame Wilson.
• Further substantiates motive.

Continue reading ‘Cheney, Libby, the CIA and Niger’