Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s criminal indictment Friday of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, adds to a deepening crisis of confidence in the White House.
Libby is charged with several counts, including obstruction of justice and perjury, for statements regarding how he learned that Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative.
This is not a small, technical offense. As Fitzgerald said, “compromising national security information is a very serious matter.” What the indictment of such a high government official also shows, as Fitzgerald said, was that “all citizens are bound by the law.”
Whatever political differences are behind this controversy, that fact is indisputable. What kind of fallout this will have for the administration is uncertain. Even if others haven’t been charged with criminal wrongdoing, questions remain about whether top White House officials acted unethically against political opponents.
This is a bad day for President Bush and for the nation. But it’s reassuring that Libby’s alleged lies have been exposed.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Liberals in the blogosphere have been giddy at the prospect that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will bring indictments against White House higher-ups in the CIA leak case, perhaps today. But all the celebratory talk of this as “Fitzmas Day” is as inappropriate as Tom DeLay’s grinning mug in his mug shot last week. A little respect for the gravity of the situation, please.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
The concluding paragraph of Andrew Corsello’s lengthy article on Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline in the November GQ fits into the local debates over Kline’s priorities and protesters’ fetus signs: “So you can distrust Phill Kline’s motives. Call him a goon out to gut the right to privacy. Call him a shameless huckster who uses his formidable mind and mastery of tone to veil his ends-justify-the-means essentialism. But you can’t ignore what he wants you to look at. As a moral agent in the world, you ultimately don’t have the option not to decide what, when, and who a person is.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman
It’s understandable that the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Teachers Association would be unhappy about seeing their copyrighted material included in new Kansas science standards critical of evolution theory. But unwilling to allow its use? Yet the groups have denied the state the use of their material, which sets back the board’s plan to give the standards final approval next month. In trying to punish the state board’s conservative majority, the national groups are punishing Kansas kids, too, by denying the state the use of solid, science-based information in standards unrelated to evolution. That’s regrettable. Then again, it’s not the science groups’ fault that Kansas is in this mess. It’s the school board’s.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Video games are often accused of promoting violence, but a few of the new ones are trying to promote peace.
One game in the works calls on players to negotiate peace in the Middle East. Another — which the United Nations recently released — asks players to feed thousands on a fictitious island. And MTV is holding a contest to see who can design the best game that deals with the Darfur, Sudan, crisis.
“Activism needs to be rethought and reinvented with each generation,” said Stephen Friedman, general manager of an MTV channel shown on college campuses. “This is a generation that lives online — what better way to have an effect?”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
