The president is a man of his word. And he didn’t make any exception for pardoned criminals.
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July 19, 2005
WB: Crime and Punishment
Comments
The date of the judgement should be February 5, 1997.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 19 2005 3:18 utc | 1
In “Network of the Living Dead” (@11:31 PM), Billmon seems ever so slightly bemused by CNN’s reluctance to dispose of Robert Novak’s badly decomposed corpse. Billmon, commonsensical as always, takes it on faith that a dead body means that a person whose body has died is no longer among the living, and indeed this is usually the case. But hasn’t Billmon also heard of “mortification of the flesh”? The phrase is meant to indicate, more or less, that you’ve actually killed yourself (without also exactly dying) in order to fulfill the wishes of Your Lord–for He wants you to die, it would seem–and this “mortification of the flesh” is the only thing to do when you’ve signed up with that noble enterprise known as Opus Dei .
Posted by: alabama | Jul 19 2005 4:32 utc | 3
In Opus Dei, once your body’s dead, you can go about your business as usual–business which, as we all know, is altogether more important than the business of lowly mortals. In Opus Dei, you can do the Lord’s work in the person of Alberto Fujimori. Anyway, Novak, as we all know, recently made the mighty shift from being an ordinary Jewish mensch to becoming a Catholic under the watchful guidance of an Opus Dei leader. Does it stand to reason, I therefore ask, that Novak would join the Catholic Family only to perch on the threshold of immortality? No, not at all–whence the necrotic stench that emanates from his words, his features and his deeds. Yes, Bob Novak’s immortal, and he’ll be with us long after we’re dead and gone–long after the name “Plame,” indeed, will have dwindled down to an absurdly obscure question in an unimaginably detailed version of “trivial pursuit”.
Posted by: alabama | Jul 19 2005 4:33 utc | 4
Indeed you did, Pat, @4:36 PM. Interesting how these facts are militantly ignored by the press….
Posted by: alabama | Jul 19 2005 6:06 utc | 6
Ray McGovern’s
latest useful polemic on the Plame Game, and its significance. I wonder when “treason” will begin to be a media-acceptable accusation.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 19 2005 6:40 utc | 7
re: Crime and Punishment
Billmon .. Isn’t Poindexter employed by the busheviks at the Pentagon? There’s another pardoned felon for ya.
Posted by: Dave | Jul 19 2005 9:58 utc | 8
A journo needs to frame it thus: Mr. President, legality and ethics can be two seperate issues. Adultry is not illegal yet is universally accepted as unethical. Proper people don’t engage in it and are rightly condemned by most for committing it. If Karl Rove has broken no laws and has merely been unethical why is that acceptable to you?
Posted by: steve duncan | Jul 19 2005 14:47 utc | 9
@ steve duncan
I’m not sure that the division between ethics and the law are even necessarily going to register on that particular set of tin ears. Leaving aside the morally bankrupt cast of characters that Bush the Younger has voluntarily surrounded himself with, let’s give a cursory examination to the formative influence of his family. Despite the fact that his own grandfather was convicted of the crime of trading with the enemy in 1942… which is a shame as this same conviction, had it come a mere eight years later would have almost certainly landed Prescott on the OFAC blacklist (a blacklist currently being used heavily and arbitrarily now by the President), effectively eliminating the Bush dynasty entirely. None of this has prevented the President from making idiotic blanket statements that have indirectly condemned his grandfather (whether he was found legally culpable or not).
But what about his brother, Prince Neil? Does the fact that he was never convicted mean that he is not a criminal? Would this distinction have prevented the President from signing into law a measure designed to put the screws to the poor and working classes while simultaneously declaring that the poor economy is their own faults for being lazy and irresponsible.
No matter how a question is framed by a journalist, the difference between legality and ethics are not going to impress this man who has made it clear that, in his view, the greatest crime of all is being poor.
@alabama
I find it very unfair that so many act as though a person’s life is over just because they happen to be dead. I do not know much about Robert Novak’s background, but it is extremely possible that he has a history of death in his family and that his putrefaction has nothing to do with his theological beliefs. To ascribe the walking dead’s lifestyle (or deathstyle) to a religous conviction is both narrow minded and insulting. Current research in the field indicates that very few people “choose” to be dead (I mean, really! When did you “choose” to be alive?) and even well-meaning people like yourself are perpetuating negative and hateful stereotypes against semi-animated corpses, zombies, Jeremy Bentham, vampires, spectres and et cetera. Frankly, I am supportive of the fact that Novak has enjoyed such an active post mortem career and think we should all be so lucky!
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 20 2005 3:29 utc | 10