Roberts: The Conservatives' Redemption

Our friend Ryan S. over at his blog, http://jokerstotheright.blogspot.com/, was beginning to get discouraged about the progress of the Bush agenda, prompting him to wonder “why I worked so hard for Bush to win.” Last night, I’d imagine he felt some redemption with the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

President Bush could have taken the easy route, nominating a moderate sure to gain quick approval and unite the country. To those who expected this to happen, I must ask…where have you been the last five years? Bush doesn’t really care about the opposition, and from a political standpoint, he owed it to his base to nominate a justice with strong Conservative credentials. These credentials may give me and my fellow Liberals the weeby-jeebies, but at least this was something Bush was honest and up front about. In the end, Bush came through for his base, picking a man from his strongest constituency: conservative, white males. Ultimately, it was a nice thank you gift to many of his supporters, some of whom (like Ryan) have frustratingly watched Bush’s agenda stall before Congress and public opinion. Now, Conservatives can better advance their agenda through the Court; let’s be honest, judicial activism is a two way street, and we shouldn’t honestly expect a more right-leaning court to uphold certain liberal status-quos and laws.

Unless something spectacular emerges to prevent it, Roberts will probably be confirmed fairly easily. It hasn’t been that long since his last confirmation, which went quite smoothly. The Democrats have to be careful here; though the American people deserve a proper vetting of a justice who, in all likelihood, will be on the bench for two to three decades, Senate Democrats also must not come across as obstructionists, a label that worked to depose Tom Daschle. As much as it pains me to say it, both Bush and the Republican-majority Senate were fairly elected by the American people. In the end, we may have to suck it up, and simply work to keep public opinion on our side on critical issues to minimize the damage. Oh yeah, and while we’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt to hope and pray Justices Stevens and Ginsburg can hold out until we can take back the White House.

Worse than Watergate?

This piece appeared on the Op-Ed page of today’s NY Times. It is, at the very least, a thought provoking piece, worthy of consideration. I’ve picked out major points, but I encourage those who have access to read the article in its entirety.

Excerpts from: We're Not in Watergate Anymore

--by Frank Rich

My colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.

…The most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.

…[It was] Mr. [Joseph] Wilson's flat refutation of [claims Saddam sought uranium in Niger in Africa] that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name. The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.

…Following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation.

Political pressure didn't force Mr. Ashcroft to relinquish control of the Wilson investigation to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, until Dec. 30, 2003, more than five months after Mr. Novak's column ran. Now 18 more months have passed, and no one knows what crime Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating. Is it the tricky-to-prosecute outing of Mr. Wilson's wife, the story Judy Miller never even wrote about? Or has Mr. Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.

That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.

In his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that "more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already," before concluding that "we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now.

Tragedy In London

We were attacked yesterday; not just based on the NATO principle that an attack on one nation is an attack on all nations. No, the tie with England, our motherland, has for nearly a century now been stronger than a piece of paper. The special relationship, first developed during the First World War but forged permanently by Winston Churchill and FDR during WWII, represents a binding tie with our closest ally. The bond between the “English Speaking Peoples” is indeed strong, and just as they suffered with us on September 11th, so too do we suffer now. Right or wrong, they have stood with us through thick and thin, and now deserve the same loyalty as we renew our fight against international terrorism.

This does not mean blind support or another war against a country with thin terrorist ties; clearly Bush’s plan to “take the fight to the terrorist so we don’t have fight them at home” didn’t work out so well. Al-Qaeda (presumably) has now shown that it is still capable and willing to attack the west in its most populous areas.

However, England, unlike Spain, will not waver. They are a tough, stubborn people; we owe it to them to renew and refocus our fight against terrorism BACK to terrorism, back to Bin Laden, back to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere if necessary. We’ve made Iraq unstable enough that securing it is now a necessary part of that process, but we cannot become bogged down in one place. The threat comes from everywhere, including within our own borders. The tragic attacks in London are a reminder that we must continue to fight that presence, all the while preserving our civil liberties and way of life. In doing so, we assure that we are making our people safer while protecting the very freedoms the terrorist seek to destroy.