Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Potemkin Prosecution: Part Two

Prominent Washington attorney Clarice Feldman has written the second installment of The Potemkin Prosecution, the misguided Patrick Fitzgerald prosecution of Lewis Libby.

9 comments:

brylun said...

Don't forget the academic appointment a la Anita Hill.

cf said...

Thanks. Though "prominent" is debatable.I really appreciate your posting this. I'm afraid it is getting harder and harder to get people to pay attention to what happened and the lies in the beginning are what will stick in the public mind.

Rick Ballard said...

DT,

The "investigation" was complete within two months of Fitzgerald's illegal appointment. As Clarice notes, by Feb. '04 Fitz had the names of Novak's sources. His actions from that point on were of a persecutorial rather than prosecutorial nature.

While there is some entertainment value in watching him be hoist by his own petard, one must sympathize for this Inspector Clouvert's victim. There is also a bit of ex parte nastiness going on to which Judge Walton needs to put a stop. Fitzgerald has already made a fool of Judge Tatel through his specious affidavits. Trying to pull the wool over Judge Walton's eyes with whispers of a "continuing investigation" needs to be brought to a halt.

cf said...

It is sad, David, because the Administration as far as I can see (and the SSCI/Silberman and Butler Commissions concur) it was honestly reporting the consensus opinion of the intel agencies. (Consensus is never uananimity and the caliber of the information they got was generally crap filtered thru the CIA and DoS which was committed to not see any connection between Saddam and 9/11 and which wanted to maintain the status quo at whatever cost to national security, believing terrorism was a tolerable cost we could continue to bear..

Rick Ballard said...

I forget that others are not following this as intently (doggedly?) as I am. The reference to Inspector Clouvert is to Fitzgerald who shows all the insight of Inspector Clouseau matched with perserverance of Inspector Jouvert.

Sort of a rabid pit bull chasing his own tail. He needs putting down.

brylun said...

Rick, Some of us pay very close attention to what you write.

Syl said...

Wow, this is a terrific article. Clarification, thy name is Clarice.

cf said...

Thanks, Syl.

Rick Ballard said...

Syl,

It is interesting to contrast the clarity in writing between practioners of the law and theorists. I've stopped reading most of the law blogs where the authors are professors because of both the verbosity of the profs and the absolute shallowness of many of the law students who seem to comprise the majority of the commenters. Reading Brylun, Vnjagvet and Clarice is like breathing fresh air after being in a stuffy room.

The Chief Justice writes with that sort of clarity - or he did in his first opinion, anyway. I'm actually looking forward to reading more of them - which hasn't precisely been the case in the past.