A Right-Wing Attack Machine Kind of Day…
August 5th, 2008Ho, hum. Yawn…
Karl Rove’s minions have been hard at work today, high on meth and Red Bull, trying to follow-up the media coverage in the Siegelman appeal by trying to anonymously and otherwise discredit reliable sources.
Since I have other blog business to do around here and don’t have anymore time to waste on them, I’ll just leave it to former journalist of some note and now lawyer of some note in Montgomery, Priscilla Duncan, for the response.
A comprehensive statement of Karl Rove’s use of the media to attack Jill Simpson
by Priscilla Duncan
A response to: Unappealing Power Play
A Response To the Editors of The National Review
Dear Editors:
I am the legal counsel for Dana Jill Simpson, and we are demanding a retraction for the false and misleading statements in your August 5 editorial.
Ms. Simpson wrote an affidavit that was released just before Gov. Don Siegelman was sentenced last year. She was only the first of several persons who have testified regarding the political aspects of his prosecution. Included among them were law professor Scott Horton and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Conyers’ inquiry was not solely based on her statement as you stated.
Ms. Simpson’s sworn testimony to the Judiciary Committee was structured exactly as Conyers and Lamar Smith requested. That testimony was backed up with about four pounds of Ms. Simpson’s documents, which you apparently haven’t taken time to examine.
She did not testify to Conyers in a private interview — where do you people get this stuff??
The hearing was in the form of a deposition to majority and minority counsel — three each. She was questioned four hours, sworn to tell the truth and there were no restrictions on inquiry. Ms. Simpson and I even offered to Republicans to answer questions over the telephone prior to the inquiry, but they evinced no interest.
During the time we were in Washington, we never met with Conyers or any member of the Committee or any member of Congress for that matter. Ms. Simpson has never met Conyers.
Ms. Simpson’s account has never changed, only the questions. Many of the “stories” as you refer to them, were detailed earlier to journalists or lawyers, but were not released due to their selection of topic. Other issues simply were not explored. 60 Minutes interviewed Ms. Simpson in three cities for more than 6 hours and telephoned numerous times on fine points. The two minutes of Ms. Simpson’s interview that 60 Minutes chose to use was not selected by Ms. Simpson. If there really were inconsistencies in her testimony, Karl would have something else to offer besides calling her “a lunatic,” a word Google associates with Rove 99,800 times.
In her Congressional testimony Rove is mentioned 16 times. Obviously, no one on your staff has read it, and you are repeating false information vomited out by Mr. Rove and his henchmen. Rove attacks Ms. Simpson because he knows she knows more. Her information about such matters is vast. Rove can’t afford to testify without knowing it all, and for this reason he has attempted to lure her into a defamation action against him for the scurrilous lies he has told about her in GQ, Weekly Standard , Powerline , News Busters and now The National Review.
I am sure Rove has steadily cursed the Republican counsel in the Judiciary Committee for not grilling Ms. Simpson with more gusto last fall — but then, Rove ran out of Washington like a scalded dog two weeks before Ms. Simpson testified on Sept. 14. He resigned Aug. 31.
As Ms. Simpson says, “Slander is the ultimate revenge of a coward.” Rove has trampled through government like a wild boar in a turnip patch for too many years. Now that he’s being hunted, he is hiding in the woods from the House Judiciary Committee. He needs to come out in the sunshine, tell the truth and stop being terrified of Ms. Simpson.
That it takes a small town lawyer in Alabama to do it, casts shame on all you puffed up big-city pundits. Barry Goldwater would be embarrassed by you and so would William F. Buckley.
PD
August 6th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Mark Twain once remarked, “America has no native criminal class, except Congress.” That could be extended today to include the army of “political operatives” of whom Karl Rove is the leading exemplar.
Rove’s career is a case study that demonstrates some fundamental flaw with the governance system, that being a system so corrupt it tends to attract people like Rove rather than the honest and ethical.
The corruption is rooted in the now nearly unlimited access to resources and power exercised by the federal government, attracting Machiavellians like dead bloated cattle attract vultures. Individuals with any sense of decency and morality either never get involved or go screaming into the night, with a few notable exceptions.
Real change will not come through this year’s elections, nor indeed through any foreseeable ones, but through a change in the values of individuals. That will eventually manifest in cleaner and saner governance. Put another way, politics does not offer the solutions, but eventually politics will be transformed by cultural change.
August 6th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Maybe. Some days there are indications that there is hope for change. Other days the situation looks absolutely hopeless.
It is hard not to be exhausted after the past seven and a half years of this complete onslaught on our freedoms by the most corrupt administration in White House history. And it is not heartening to see the ignorance spouted by anonymous twits all over Alabama who still don’t get this because the local press simply will not give people accurate information. It’s all about the money, they say, and it appears to be true.
Even some of the folks from New York and other places who have gotten involved in helping to shine the spotlight on the injustices committed here are not entirely pure in their efforts here. The story is too complicated to explain in an e-mail message or a blog post, and certainly in a blog comment, which is a limited form of communication but never-the-less useful.
But as I sit here and look at Bill O’Reilly’s face in the Google ad to the left on the screen, I just want to escape to Zanadu or Nova Scotia until Rove is in jail and Bush is gone off to Paraguay. Maybe then America will once again be worth living in and defending.