David Brooks is still an asshole

Which sucks, because I have a very good friend by that same name:

Well, here is what he said tonight on the Jim Lehrer Newshour:

But this -- that crime was surrounded by a vast circus of hypocrisy and partisan dishonesty, starting with the original case, which was allegedly about outing a CIA agent, when it was never really about that, because, once it turned out that was Richard Armitage, nobody cared anymore, and then the hypocrisy over whether somebody should go to jail for perjury, with Democrats saying one thing with Clinton, another thing with Libby.

So, there was just this vast mountain of partisanship and dishonesty and shamelessness, which I don't think you can separate away from what Libby did. So, I thought he deserved to be punished, but did not deserve the 30 months that was sentenced.

What a disingenuous bastard! If Joe Wilson had simply parroted a John Kerry line about Iraq while the intelligence community stood firmly behind the President then one could make the case that Joe's July 2003 op-ed was dishonest partisanship. But that did not happen. Just the opposite. Joe Wilson's July 2003 op-ed saying Iraq did not try to buy uranium from Niger was validated a few days later by the CIA and the President's own spokesman conceded the President should not have used the 16 words in the State of the Union address. Where is the goddamn partisanship? Joe Wilson, the CIA, and the President's spokesman agree on the main point and you cry partisanship? What a putz!

I want to add to this the same thing I said last week when someone brought up the whole "Clinton did that same thing" crap. Clinton did pardon quite a lot of people, but he didn't pardon anyone that outwardly obstructed justice the way Libby did. I also get told that Clinton was convicted of the same thing, and that's not true either. Clinton was not found guilty of lying under oath, and even if he had can we grow up about it? Clinton's "lie", which was immaterial while he was under oath, was an attempt to save himself from the embarrassment of infidelity. He was trying to protect his family and his honor. Libby on the other hand lied about the release of classified information to the press. Information that was used, not to protect anything, but to discredit an honest man.

Now to break it down for the kindergarteners out there, it breaks down like this. One man claimed he knew nothing at all about information that jeopardized national security and the other claimed he never got a blow job. Seriously, does this really make for an even debate?