Friday, February 10, 2006

You got to believe.

This is huge. Murray Waas, reports in the National Journal, as follows:
Cheney ‘Authorized’ Libby to Leak Classified Information

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Why is this so huge? Join me as we revisit the heady days of yesteryear, when a President could get impeached for spying on Americans in violation of the law.

Willie Mays hit his 660th and final homerun on August 17, 1973, and the Mets were 7 ½ games back in the National League East. They didn’t have a twenty game winner or a .300 hitter. They had a gutsy relief pitcher named Tug McGraw and once during a clubhouse meeting he yelled out, “Ya gotta believe.” It became the team’s rallying cry.

Back in those days, the President was Richard Nixon, and the Vice-President was a common criminal named Spiro Agnew. He received envelopes of cash payments for graft when he was the Governor of Maryland. And quel horreur he failed to pay income tax on it.

Look, tax evasion isn’t very sexy, but it’s what got Capone. And it got Agnew, too. Millions of Americans heard the term Nolo Contendre for the first time and Agnew resigned.

Up until that moment, nobody took the impeachment of Nixon very seriously because there was not one person in either house of Congress who could bear the thought of President Agnew.

The day that Agnew resigned, October 10, 1973, was a day that is carved in our nation’s history. The New York Daily News’ headline will never be forgotten:
METS WIN PENNANT
Agnew resigns
As Casey Stengal once said, “You could look it up.”

… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!

P.S. Polling question: “If it were determined that President Bush broke the law, do you support the U.S. Congress holding him accountable through impeachment and removal from office?”

Support or Strongly Support ……… 49.8%
Oppose or Strongly Oppose ………. 38.7%

You gotta believe.

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