Really, Bob? Fitzgerald?

This has been getting a lot of attention lately. I like the question, but I worry about who they want to conduct it. Bob Fertik:

"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"
-Bob Fertik, New York City

This was posted at Change.gov, and has been praised to the hilt by blogs, and featured by Countdown and This Week's George Stayontopofthis.

Special prosecutor, yes. But Patrick Fitzgerald? Really?

I'm totally puzzled by this infatuation people have with Patrick Fitzgerald. Does ANYONE remember this?

Vice President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing Wednesday.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war.

Fitzgerald said Cheney’s “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity and what he subsequently told reporters.

That worked out great, didn't it? Libby took the fall and everyone above him, especially Cheney, walked. The federal crime of outing a CIA agent, and the goon responsible is still vice president.

Now Fitz is going after Blagojevich. Let's all see what comes of that.

This guy always talks a good game, and has had some success on the local level. But let's face it - he choked on the national stage in the Super Bowl of investigations. So I hope you'll understand why I have very little faith in his ability to execute another investigation of this magnitude.

Stop with this Fitzgerald love. Find someone who knows how to freakin' prosecute.

Comments

[Duncanini]

I concur, in spades.

[cage free brown]

I think we see this on the "far left blogs" a lot.
Remember when Russert kicked the bucket? everybody and their pet fish Eric said they thought it HAD to be Chuck Todd! well, yeah, Todd was saying what a lot of Obama supporters wanted to hear at that time but it did nothing to change the fact that Todd is just another beltway yahoo and I think time has shown this to be true.

"the far left blogs" can really do wonders when we're all on the same page. sometimes I think we should choose those pages a little more carefully.

[legadillo]

I agree. Fitzgerald had us breathless and teased it out just as long as he could. It's one thing to keep your cards close to your chest; it's another to leave everybody hanging for fun? For self aggrandizement? It damaged the possibility of ever bringing charges against Cheney, I think. Now it looks as if a real pit bull like Fitzgerald couldn't pin anything on Cheney, so either it can't be done or Cheney's innocent.

Fitzmas. Puh.

[Carl]

All right...if it can't be Fitz, then who should it be?

Bugliosi?

Someone else?

[Bonnie]

It appears to me that it doesn't matter whether many left blogs want Fitzgerald or not. It appears to me that Obama is not even going to consider going after Bush and his Gang. That is what sucks for me. They say we need to go forward. What would you have thought if after they caught Ted Bundy that someone said, "Let's not try him. Let's just move forward and heal. After all, he only mudered a few dozen women and none of them were my daughter. So, let's not try him and bring back all these bad memories. Let's move forward." (Just for the record, I am against the death penalty. I thought Bundy should have rotted in prison until he died.)

Fitzgerald was a disappointment to me because Libby was his only target on that treasonous affair. Cheney and his staff and Novak should still be tried for treason for outing Plame's identity. But, Fitzgerald wouldn't be my first choice for Special Prosecutor; but, I think it is a small matter in comparison with all of these crooks getting away with murder and stealing the taxpayers' money. They should be held accountable for their crimes!

[Aanya]

Let's hold this discussion until Jan 21, 2009! Until we actually see what kind of protection Bush leaves his minions covered with, it's just a bunch of words!! I don't even expect Obama to be too open with his future plans on these criminals, as long as they are still in power, and he isn't! Don't forget Olbermann's shows last week, where he's making it clearer and clearer that these crooks could be forced to remain in the US for the rest of their lives. If they were found walking the streets of Paris with their wife, or fly fishing in Europe, they could be arrested and charged with war crimes by many other countries.

[buddhistMonkey]

Fitzgerald is revered because he does the right things, and he does them for the right reasons. He got Scooter Libby convicted despite obfuscation and interference from the highest levels of government, including in his own branch as part of Bush's corrupt Department of Justice. He had zero support, yet he still prevailed (and then, of course, in an even bigger show of corruption, George Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence). Take the same Patrick Fitzgerald, and give him the support and cooperation of Obama's Administration and new Justice Department, and you'd have an entirely different -- and better -- result. Fitzgerald has proven himself to be righteous, one of the few people to ever hold ANYONE from the Bush Administration accountable for their crimes. Give him the support he needs, and let him loose on the injustices of the last eight years.

[mcf, Boston MA]

Hoff, you know I love ya, but I don't think it's realistic to be painting this as a "other than that how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln" situation. I think it's time to be a bit more legally and politically realistic about Fitzgerald.

I know Illinoisan have a corruption taint to them, but really--he choked in the Super Bowl? It's more like this guy is Tom Brady who after winning a few Superbowls, had the gall to go 16-0, but fair enough let "his" defense blow it in the last few minutes of the last SuperBowl.

It's preposterous to think that Libby was his only "target"--I think it's more likely it was the only target in his legal reticule.

If you nail Scooter to the proverbial wall--after all the flak Fitz avoided and then continued to avoid with Lord Gonzales--that's somehow makes him unqualified because it didn't go far enough in a very specific legal sense to get the documentation and testimony to encircle Cheney?

Fitzgerald is a legal Colin Powell. Another friendly fire victim of Administrative Branch abuse--now with a big stick and soft shoes--and for the first time, 2/3s of a government's backing. There's no sweeter justice than a restored ignobly-tainted dignity.

"If you can't prove it, shut the hell up" is the whine I hear about Franken (rightly so, btw). If one can legally do better than getting 2 degrees from the President of The United States of America for throwing someone under the yellow(cake) bus without any realistic AG or Congressional bi-partisian commitment, that's a miserable failure?

Hell, I'd have loved a frog-march too, but I'd say getting Scooter should at least earn Fitz a 3-bar sargent job.

Or is our left's idea of a "special" prosecutor still tainted by the need to swing so far away from *legal* reality to become Ken Starr?

It's absolutely fair to ask bounding questions about qualifications for demigod-hood, but, praise-Cheebus he did a brilliant job under incredible circumstances and now people are thinking what he might be able to do with someone finally backing up his backbone.

And let's not forget he's the one taking the "local" initiative about the sale of 1/100th of our Senate of the United States.

Hell, you heard it first here...Fitz just might end up in that seat.

(...let's just hope he doesn't have a Spitzer habit...)

[Hoffmania Himself]

Well put, mcf. However, Libby was too happy to take the fall. He knew his job was to absorb the blow of the Plame investigation and he performed it.

I do appreciate what he's done, and I hope everyone's right about him. I would just love to see him actually get them in front of microphones and cameras so we can all see their defense of their war crimes. If Fitz can accomplish that, then I'll never be happier to be wrong.

[Sarita]

Maybe what we really need to do is move forward. What can possibly be gained at this point? All we will accomplish is to keep the hate alive! Let's move towards healing the country and saving the Republic

[Aanya]

Sarita we are a country of laws and I don't know how we can sentence one more person to prison without doing the exact same thing to the Bush participants who knowingly and purposely lied, manipulated intelligence and committed such overwhelming crimes against humanity, many thousands of our sons and daughters are either dead or maimed so severly, they will never have a normal life. I didn't believe in the "death penalty" until Timothy McVey. Sometimes when the crime is so enormous, we can't justify anything less that removing their toxic stain from the face of the earth!

[cage free brown]

I'm sorry but it just bugs the bejesus out of me when people who want accountability from the Bush Admin is characterized as "keeping hate alive"

where was all the concern for being nice when the Hammer was in full swing?
there are still prominent Repubs and the pundits who love them that STILL act like any wrong doing on their part is the result of hysteria and bias.

it's NOT hate - it's called consequences. I teach my kids that this happens when people do the wrong thing. I'd like my kids to think that I know what the hell I'm talking about.

[lawton]

CNN "FOX 2" spent the day reading emails telling America to leave Bush and Cheney alone. There are at least forty eight million people in our nation who think Bush and his minions were justified in committing crimes against humanity, circumventing and breaking our laws and trashing the Constitution.
These are the people who want bygones to be bygone until they regain the power they crave. They will lead us to the slaughter if we allow them to go unchallenged.
Prosecute and punish! No commissions please!

[lawton]

Has anyone considered that "Patrick my Boy" played the game to perfection knowing a "Scooter pardon" was already in the works.
Just call me a cynic!