Ann Coulter's Not Paranoid By: Mark W Adams

The Coultergeist isn't unreasonably paranoid -- because we ARE coming to get them.

SHOOTING ELEPHANTS IN A BARREL: "Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence."

[snip]

As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson (news, bio, voting record) was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.

This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.

In her latest report from fantasy land, Mitt Romney's BFF catalogues a laundry list of cases where a Republican crook was hounded by the legal system they scoffed at, while Democrats go scott free.

There's more...

She gives us not one, but two gratuitious Kennedy references (a family I admit has a genetic defect when it comes to driving) used as a counterwight to Rush Limbaugh being unfairly subject to a criminal investigation for doctor shopping -- who it seems was only targeted because he is a Republican.

What a shame there's only so much room to be had in a syndicated column. Apparently a fair representation of the facts is just so much fluff when up against a deadline, right Annie? She just didn't have room to remind us that Rush still has to pee in a cup at random intervals and wrote a check for thirty grand as part of his deal with prosecutors -- who might have offered that off the bat had El Rushbo agreed to open up his records instead of playing the martyr and cluttering up the appeals courts.

Rush did have a point when it comes to his 4th amendment privacy rights, but I'm not all that sympathetic, mainly because of his prior hypocrisy about how all druggies should be locked up.

MSNBC: Before his own problems became public, Limbaugh had decried drug use and abuse and mocked President Clinton for saying he had not inhaled when he tried marijuana. He often made the case that drug crimes deserve punishment.

“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up,” Limbaugh said on his short-lived television show on Oct. 5, 1995.

During the same show, he commented that statistics that show blacks go to prison more often than whites for the same drug offenses only illustrate that “too many whites are getting away with drug use.

Just makes you want to cry for the guy, doesn't it.

The Coultergeist treads around very dangerous ground by even mentioning the name Clinton with regard to irresponsible use of the legal system for political games, especially in the context of a perjury case. But much to my relief, she was only referring to some Clinton contributor who was accused of statutory rape and apparently reached a deal with a Palm Beach prosecutor to plead down to solicitation of prostitution.

You don't think she has a gripe with Florida law enforcement folks, do you?

Annie ... baby. ...flies and honey girlfriend -- not Lies and Money. You're just daring them to throw the book at you for voter fraud. Here's a clue. Don't challenge prosecutors who have nothing to lose and publicity to gain. How do you think Giuliani got where he is today.

Coulter has refused to cooperate with investigators. Dumb, just dumb. That's not how the Kennedys kept their driver's licenses.

And here I sense the pattern. Perhaps there's something about the conservative movement mindset about being free, what "liberty" really means to them. It may be similar to the civil disobedience talked about by Henry David Thoreau, a hero of anachists and protesting hippies for generations.

Wiki, Civil Disobedience: The American author Henry David Thoreau pioneered the modern theory behind this practice in his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience (Wikisource Text), originally titled "Resistance to Civil Government". The driving idea behind the essay was that of self-reliance, and how one is in morally good standing as long as one can "get off another man's back"; so one doesn't have to physically fight the government, but one must not support it or have it support one (if one is against it).

Sounds like good old-fashioned American values, go-getters standing up to an unjust government. Unfortunately, in practice this can lead to anarchy -- especially when you aren't just fighting the government, but you are the government. For the last six years, the party that controlled all three branches of government was actively working to undermine that same government because of their allegience to Thoreau's creed. It sounds absurd, but it sure does explain how so much could go wrong under their watch and why Grover Norquist wants to shrink the government to the point where he can drown it in a bathtub.

Again, I repeat the notion that all the fiascos we see daily being explained away in Washington D.C., are features, not bugs. It's the logical result of their ideology.

The purity of their intentions, the righteousness of their cause is not open for debate or supervision. Nobody is going to tell them what to do because their arrogance will not permit enough doubt or introspection to allow them to admit error. Sound familiar, like maybe a certain Commander in Chief?

So, convinced of their infalliability or worried that an admission of human error will unravel their entire public facade, the very idea that they would cooperate with law enforcement or Congressional investigations is inconceivable. Since they believe they can do no wrong, any inquiry must be a witch-hunt.

That's how you end up with cover-ups instead of sunshine. That's why you get people convicted of lying about illegal wars getting pardoned and returning to work in the White House. (No, not Scooter -- or did you forget about Elliot Abrams?)

Do you see the pattern? Nixon's administration stonewalls investigators, and ten of them went to jail for lying either to investigators or Congress. Ford pardoned unindicted co-conspirator Nixon, but his Chief of Staff (some guy named Richard Cheney) didn't pull any strings to get the others released. Reagan's administration boasted convictions of Poindexter and North for lying to Congress (which they did, but their convictions were overturned on appeal as 5th amendment violations of their immunity agreements) and President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger and current Oval Office advisor Abrams for the Same. Damn. Thing.

Poor Scooter. How unjust it is to be convicted for behaving like so many other administration officials who thought they could get away with lying under oath. You don't have to refer to blue dresses to make the point here people.

It's not that we're going after Republicans just because they are Republicans. Tom DeLay isn't being unjustly persecuted as Coulter would have her readers believe. There's a lot of cash that went through a lot of his associates' hands (many of whom are now doing time), cash that is regulated and hands that can be corrupted because they hold the public's trust -- and with so many people around him going to jail something seems fishy enough to warrant an investigation of one of the nation's most powerful public employees.

You don't compare Tom DeLay with William "The Refridgerator" Jefferson. You compare the common bribery cases of Duke Cunninghame and Bob Ney with Jefferson. Tom DeLay's greed was for the power to fundamentally transform this nation into something none of us would recognize, not cash.

Typically, Tom didn't open up his books and show the world that there's no "there" there. He's taking his chances, playing the martyr card they have perfected to an art form, and daring the cops to make their case. Folks, that isn't how politicians earn our respect, unless you too want to grow up to be a Mafia Don.

No, these people are not innocent victims of an out-of-control judicial system or rogue prosecutors. They are not "innocent until they confess," even though Coulter and the repugnant Kate O'Beirne would have us grant so little respect for the jury system we should believe trials and verdicts are simply tools wielded by those evil "activist" judges Tom DeLay and his ilk would abolish.

It's truly pathological. It's come to the point that it's impossible for them to learn the error of their ways even when something worst than jail happens. They lost their congressional majority in no small part because they tried to cover-up for a pedophile hitting on congressional pages. Dennis Haster or those close to him felt, like Thoreau taught them, that their cause was so important it justified ignoring the laws they themselves write. Even if the GOP still had lost the House (which they certainly would), without the Foley scandal Hastert would have remained the Minority Leader.

No remorse. You've yet to see an act of contrition from Oliver North, Abrams or Negroponte for waging war behind our backs. A war people! You won't see any remorse from them about leaking the identity of covert operatives either. They truly believe they are above the law, more important and answering to a higher calling than the law and content to obfuscate with the technical rather than answer for the inherent lawlessness they promote. That's why Robert Novak can call for Libby to be set free with no sense of irony.

Get. A. Clue.

They pay the price for trying to hide the truth again and again. But in the long run, with truth forever obscured by these poor hounded "patriots," America itself pays the price as the lights of that shining city on the hill grow dimmer due to low-hanging clouds.


(Romney and Coulter in a strategy planning session.)