THE SYSTEM WORKS, FOR WELL-CONNECTED WHITE MEN FROM CONNECTICUT

"Speaking as friends, we hope that our system will return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man." Dick Cheney regarding Lewis "Scooter" Libby, June 5, 2007.



No surprise here that Libby was pardoned, and lest we get too sanctimonious, let's not forget the Clinton pardons for Bill's brother Roger and Hillary's brother Hugh. I won't waste my breath sputtering over the pardon, which is of course scandalous. More interesting is whether this pardon sparks a debate over our two-tier justice system, or a great national shrug. It's not as if Bush's standing can get any lower in the polls, and it's not as if Congress is actually going to impeach anyone over this.

The people in charge of the Democratic party now belong, for the most part, to the same social class as the Republicans. And although the poorest among us have things a tiny bit easier under Democratic administrations, that social class doesn't do Hard Time unless one of them is caught with a dead girl or a live boy,

In a better world, we would see a presidential candidate using the Libby pardon to talk about the forgotten men in prison. If there are 2 million Americans in prison, that's a city as big as Houston or Chicago. And in the best of all possible worlds, we will have no more public sanctimony about the American justice system, unless we're talking about what it MIGHT be.

What Muppet Are You?

You are Scooter.
You are a loyal, hardworking person, better known
as a doormat.



SPECIAL TALENTS:
Going for stuff.
LEAST FAVORITE MOVIE:
"Go For Broke!"

QUOTE:
"15 seconds to showtime."

LAST BOOK READ:
"300 New Ways to Get Your Uncle to Get You a
Better Job "

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
Coffee, clipboard, and Very Special Guest Stars.

Right Foot Blue, Left Foot Yellow

Won't it be interesting if Vice-President Cheney were pulled down not by the war, not by his political enemies, not by collusion with energy executives, not by sweetheart deals for Halliburton, but by a little thing like the Libby case?

Ignoring Joseph Wilson's report on yellowcake in Africa would have sufficed; cherry-picking the facts worked in dismissing every other informed opponent of the war. Instead, Cheney's inability to tolerate dissent led him to elevate Wilson's importance as a critic. This led to Cheney, or the people around him, outing Wilson's wife as some kind of senseless payback. Now there's a mad scramble of middle aged people trying to cover their asses like a deranged game of Twister.

The BBC and Bobby Kennedy

Photograph copyright BillWray.com. Verbatim excerpt from the BBC News for Tuesday 21 November 2006:
"New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been brought to light. The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O'Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight. It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

"Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry. A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him. However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time. Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind. Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to act as a decoy for the real assassin.

"The report is the result of a three-year investigation by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. He reveals new video and photographs showing three senior CIA operatives at the hotel. Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

"David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

".... Paul Schrade, a key figure behind the school project, was walking behind Robert Kennedy that night and was shot in the head. He believes this new evidence merits fresh investigation: "It seems very strange to me that these guys would be at a Kennedy celebration. What were they doing there? And why were they there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this." Ed Lopez, a former Congressional investigator who worked with Joannides in 1978, says: "I think the key people at the CIA need to go back to anybody who might have been around back then, bring them in and interview them, and ask - is this Gordon Campbell? Is this George Joannides?"