Be nice!
You have the Democrats as Demoralized but no mention of the Republicans?
How's this:
What with DeLay's Indictment, Frist's Probe, KY Gov. Fletcher Pre-emptive Pardon members of his staff (who he then fired), Cheney's Chief of Staff being investigated for treasonous actions, FEMA's Brown's forced resignation, Ohio Gov Bob Taft's ethics violations, OMB's David Safavian arrest for lying and obstructing the criminal investigation of Republican mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and, on top of all that, Bush's poll numbers in the basement for failures in Katrina and Iraq, the Republicans are in hot water.
Many question if corruption is part and parcel of the current Republican leadership.
Or at least that's the Word on my street.
But then, this is your blog...
Two words, Dan: jury trial.
Well, it's rather hard to have a jury trial when your governor or president pre-emptively pardons those indicted!
Are you saying that you didn't start getting suspicious of Clinton when he was being investigated and that the only thing he was guilty of was perjury to cover up an affair (which was not the point of the investigation)? And you're still not suspicious even though he was found innocent of all that he was investigated for?
(And please don't read this wrong. I disliked many of Clinton's policies as well as his personal demeanor and thought he should have stepped down when he perjured himself.)
And be sure, these folk are largely going free (if they do) because our system is corrupt. And some of them may be innocent BUT that's exactly what's wrong with our system. Its corruption taints all involved as guilty because you know the guilty are getting off anyway.
Will you at least join me in shouting corrupt at Gov. Fletcher for his pre-emptive pardons? Does that not smack of corruption?
Will you join me in calling for their heads (figuratively) when people ARE convicted? Or will you support more Republican pardons because, well, what they did wasn't ALL that bad and the Dems were just out to get them...?
Dan, I really don't think you want a system in which no guilty person ever goes free, because it would also mean that quite a few innocent people would not. (I thought liberals were for the opposite side of that trade-off... you tacking right on us all of a sudden Dan?) As for pre-emptive pardons: yeah, I don't like 'em... especially when the pardonee has fled the country to avoid being indicted. Last I checked, Congressman DeLay did not do that. Mark Rich did and that's a tangled web if there ever was one. And don't even get me started on Clinton. Perjury, law license revoked, money from Communist China, impeachment, witness intimidation, sexual harassment, misuse of state resources (i.e., police.) We're a long, long way away from getting caught up in a web of campaign finance laws that are ridiculous to begin with - designed by a Democratic Congress to make pretty much any politician indictable. And while we're at it, Clinton's "affairs" were of a kind that I thought the women's movement in this country (and liberals in general) were against: coercive, with staff members, using state resources to procure, etc... That's a far far cry from hanging out with some other politician's wife... not that I like that any better. It's too nice a day here to bother with these tired arguments. Like I said: jury trial.
Now see there, I can agree with practically everything you said about Clinton - a common enemy.
And we can agree maybe that pardons of the sort used in politics frequently (ie, pardoning your own cronies and staff members to cover your own butt, a la Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Fletcher, W. Bush?) stinks to high heavens and ought not be allowed.
So yes, I believe in jury trials but I also believe the system is being subverted by wealthy and many politicians and changes should be demanded by you and I. I'd hope we could agree upon that, as well.
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