Play the game

In the continuing saga of the Senate Judiciary Committee attempting to get at the truth in the firings of nine U.S. prosecutors, the whole situation became a circus, as predicted. The U.S. Attorneys office, under an incompetent leader, knows it can ‘get away with’ firing these attorneys because the White House will ‘protect’ that incompetent leader to the end.

All of the witnesses and knowledgeable participants know they will not have to answer any questions put forth by the investigators, again because the White House will protect them.

Senator Patrick Leahy makes threats of a subpoena against members of the White House, the White House laughs at him, while another member, Senator Arlen Specter, of the same committee tells the intended recipients that the subpoena will not be enforced because he thinks the committee won’t learn anything from them. This all makes the Judiciary committee look pretty impotent. It makes Leahy look like a blustery old fool.

The White House appears to be guilty of complicity by not allowing the knowledgeable participants to tell what they know. The common thought is that if you are innocent then why not testify. If you are guilty or have something to hide then do whatever you can to divert attention onto something or someone else. It is basic human nature and is based in survival. This is what the White House is doing. They are stalling long enough in the hope that when the truth finally does see the light of day the relevance of the situation will have lost all importance. Stalling, diversion and passing the buck are very commonly used tools in politics. You don’t get to the ‘top of the heap’ without using them successfully.

Leahy has been pursuing the truth behind the firings of the nine attorneys because these nine individuals were wrongfully fired. Anyone who is wrongfully treated is seen as a victim and being victimized by your superior doesn’t sit well with the American people. I believe that Senator Leahy is righteously pursuing this matter and on the surface it appears that he is zealously ‘doing his job’. Very commendable. But, he is, after all, a politician. Perhaps he is using his position to further his own personal agenda. Only history will tell.

The bottom line is that these nine lawyers were hired to prosecute guilty parties no matter where those guilty parties were found. Some of those guilty parties turned out to be high-ranking republicans. In the current political environment you are not supposed to accuse republicans of wrong-doing. Apparently, no one warned them of this restriction and they were blind-sided by short-sighted, self-serving politicians in an effort to protect their own. Perhaps these politicians either ‘called-in’ a debt or ‘indebted’ someone else to themselves for future consideration. In the end, no consideration was given to the general public whose trust was violated by those individuals that these prosecutors were investigating.

These nine prosecutors, who by a simple twist of fate became under the control of an inexperienced, under-qualified individual who is backed by an unscrupulous group of men in the White House, were fired because they made no distinction as to politics. I applaud them for taking their jobs to heart. They are idealists who believed that their actions make a difference. Unfortunately, this political machine doesn’t take idealism into account anymore. Nor does it take morals to be of any consequence. I fear the real tragedy is that this experience could harden these prosecutors against ‘doing what is right’ in the future. They could come out of this convinced they have to do more to ‘clean-up’ American politics or they could become calloused and possibly even become one of the politicians that learn how to take advantage of the political game for their own personal gain.

This is usually how self-serving politicians are created. When they first start out in politics they believe they will make a difference, then something happens. Something that makes them realize that the machine is just too big and too powerful. Their idealism suffers and as a result we the people suffer and they climb up the ladder faster and some of them make headlines for being accused of some scandal. But they won’t have to worry about being damaged by those headlines because they will learn how to cover their tracks and protect themselves from future ‘over-zealous’, idealistic prosecutors.

The biggest problem in prosecuting these ‘wayward’ politicians is that the ‘order of law’ demands ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ in order to prosecute. These ‘guilty’ people know they can weasel out from under the scrutiny of investigators because they have left no ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ that can be brought into a court of law. These guys know how to get away with doing what they want. And it is a major bonus to have the White House ‘protect its own’ no matter how bad things get.

The bottom line is that there is no ‘justice’ in the justice department. There is no ‘justice’ in Washington D.C. there is no ‘justice’ in the legal system. The tactics being played out here between the guilty and those that strive to bring their guilt to light are being played by lawyers in every court room in this nation. And as a result, lies are being swept under the table, crimes are over looked, guilty individuals ‘walk’ without punishment because they all play the game.

If morals had any influence on all of these involved individuals then lies would not be swept under the table, crimes would not be over looked, and guilty individuals would not ‘walk’ without punishment.

The public knows that Alberto Gonzales does have knowledge that these individuals were fired for political reasons. The public knows that Karl Rove and Scott Jennings, deputy director of political affairs at the White House, had prior knowledge of this fact. The public knows that the circus in Washington D.C. that passes for justice cannot be ‘cleaned up’ because the public knows that morals cannot be found in American politics.