Letters, Oh I Get Letters

From the letters section of The Pilot:

Since Dusty Rhoades is such an authority on almost all subjects large and small, I wonder if he could explain why it's bad for Gov. Blagojevich of Illinois (and under impeachment) to offer to sell the senatorial seat of President Obama, but it's OK for ex-President Clinton to have sold a pardon to criminal Mark Rich for a donation to the Clinton Foundation? Bill Rose

A number of responses spring to mind, and I can't decide which would be best:

1. Gee, I don't know, Bill. Can you point out to me when I actually said that about the Rich pardon?

2. Gee, I don't know, Bill. Maybe you should ask Marc Rich's lawyer: Scooter Libby.

3. Gee, I don't know, Bill. Maybe you ought to ask the two special prosecutors the Republican Congress appointed to look into the matter , neither of whom found any grounds to indict, probably because emails uncovered during the course of the investigation revealed that the donation to the Clinton Library (by Rich's ex-wife, not Rich) was provided a full year before Scooter Libby requested that she approach Clinton for a pardon.

4. Bill, you do realize that Bill Clinton isn't President anymore, right?

5. I'm not real sure where you're going with this, Bill. Are you trying to say Blagojevich ought to walk?


Feel free to make your own suggestions.

It's a purely academic exercise, since the powers that be at the paper have "suggested" I not respond to these goobers in the column because we don't want to 'lower the discourse to their level." This naturally raises the question of why they're printing the damn letters in the first place if they lower the level of discourse, but never mind.

Of course the reason the Rich pardon is now being dredged up over and over is because it's really the only thing the wingnuts have to try to derail the confirmation of Eric Holder as Barack Obama's Attorney General, since Holder was the Deputy AG who was vetting the pardon requests for Clinton. And that effort really has nothing to do with Holder's qualifications, or even with Marc Rich. It's just more obstructionism by the party that got their asses kicked in the recent election.

If the Republicans do go there, however, I hope Holder and the Dems will be smart enough to shove wingnut hero Scooter Libby's name into at least every other sentence of their responses. I'd like to see Scooter brought up often enough in the context of the Holder vote that it becomes a drinking game. "Every time you hear 'Scooter' or 'Libby' you have to take a shot!"

I mean, what have they got to lose? Republican votes? As the recent dispaly of partisanship by the House GOP over the stimulus package shows, you can give them all the bipartisanhip you want and they'll still vote along party lines against you.

Holder may have made an egregious mistake in the Rich pardon, but at least he doesn't try to argue with a straight face that torturing people is okay.