“Our Patience Will Achieve More Than Our Force.”*
CNN report no indictments today. Bah.
At least it rachets up the pressure on Rove, Libby et al – though I doubt Rove is even capable of feeeling tension, he really thinks will walk away. He still might, if Billmon is right:
Josh Marshall wonders what it might mean for the special prosecutor’s case now that U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty has been nominated for the number-two job at the Justice Department. I suspect the short answer is: nothing good.
McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the very high-profile eastern district of Virginia, is the substitute for Tim Flanigan, the Abramoff-tainted nominee who withdrew his name earlier this month.
[…]
Before Bush appointed him to the eastern Va. post (he took office three days after 9/11) McNulty was one of John Ashcroft’s political flunkies at DoJ. Before that he headed the Bush transition team for the department. Before that he was chief counsel for Dick Armey, the former GOP House Majority Leader. Before that he was chief counsel and “communictions director” for the House Judiciary Committee. While in this position — according to an alumni profile from his alma mater Grove City College — he also:
directed house Republican media relations for the Clinton impeachment process.
Other than that, of course, his impartiality is beyond question.[…]
Going back a little further, we also find that McNulty has been willing to bend the law to Orwellian extremes in order to shield the Cheney administration’s claims of executive branch power from judicial challenge. He was in the thick of both the Padilla and Hamdi cases — staunchly defending the president’s right to lock U.S. citizens up in a military brig and throw away the key. In Hamdi’s case, McNulty made the rather Kafkaesque argument that a federal magistrate erred in appointing a public defender to challenge the prisoner’s denial of access to the courts, since Hamdi clearly had not requested the appointment — because he was denied access to the courts.
It is, of course, no surprise that a U.S. Attorney would strenuously argue the government’s case, but in my review of McNulty’s filings, I found his positions more extreme than any I’ve come across before, with the exception of John Yoo and Christian torture enthusiast Mary Walker. Whether that reflects the top-down influence of Yoo, then the deputy assistant AG in charge of developing the new Fuhrerprinzep, or McNulty’s own zealotry, I don’t know. But it shows the mark of the true organization man, if not an actual cabalist.
[…]
In any case, it’s clear that whatever his other qualities, McNulty is a far more typical partisan specimen of the species Prosecutori Federalus that the distressingly independent Fitzgerald. But what his elevation to Deputy AG will mean in practical terms I don’t know. Presumably, when McNulty is confirmed (and given his GOP bones, I’m sure it’s a when not an if) the acting AG power with respect to the Plame investigation that his predecessor signed over to career DOJ official David Margolis will devolve back to him.
But what he’ll be able to do with that power is another matter. For the Bushaviks, McNulty’s appointment may be too little, too late. By the time he takes office, Fitzgerald will have either handed down indictments or gone home. On the other hand, if charges are brought, a long, drawn-out prosecution presumably will present plenty of opportunities for the Justice Department to make its influence felt.
The left is holding its breath for these indictments, but how many are giving any thought to what comes after? The rot won’t crumble away suddenly and reveal a new, pink and shiny, improved government. The corruption’s gone too deep, tendrils are everywhere. The terrible legislation they’ve passed won’t roll back, the 100,000 Iraqi dead won’t rise again, the Arctic won’t refreeze and Katrina will still have happened, as would the bankruptcy laws, as would the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Poor people, average people, anyone who’s not white, American, male and middle class in the US (and because of US-led globalisation, the rest of the world) is still fucked, even if as some bloggers appear to hope, McCain becomes VP. Can you really see McCain purging the party, or rolling back tax-cuts for the rich? He wouldn’t last five minutes.
And does anyone really think that they won’t drag this out as long as possible? Yes, there’ll be some personnel changes as a result of all this; but they’re still the same people – people like the oleaginous Norm Coleman, he of the Gary Busey grin and child-molester sweaty forehead– they’ll just shuffle the deck a bit. Meet the new boss…
The Right won’t go away- far from it -but it will have some martyrs. The same revisionists hailing Joe McCarthy now will be describing the WHIG as ‘visionary’ within 5 years. And for every corrupt Republican indicted there are many more only too keen to step in.
So, we’re still going to have to show some fortitude: celebrate the victories, but keep plugging away.
