GayPatriot

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Karl Rove, “Plamegate” & Discrediting a Dishonest Democrat

by

While Andrew Sullivan and others on the left hold that Karl Rove (either or his own or through his mischievous minions) leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to the media in order to “smear Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson,” anyone who spends a few moments studying the facts of the case will see that what little Rove had to say (or do) with the matter involved an attempt to steer a reporter away from the story. That doesn’t sound like much of a smear to me. While the President’s enemies think Rove was involved in an effort to retaliate against a critic, at most, he was involved (and tangentially at that) in an effort to discredit a dishonest critic, a man one who lied to the American people in his criticism of the Administration.

Even Andrew’s one-time New Republic colleague (to whom Andrew introduced me in 1991) Jacob Weisberg (via Instapundit) finds that “Wilson’s accusation that administration officials outed his wife to punish him for speaking up was never really credible.” Based on Judith Miller’s account of her testimony, Weisberg suggests that another Administration official, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the Vice President’s chief of staff, may have leaked the name, not to smear Wilson, but as part of public dispute between the White House and the CIA. Weisberg notes that “Libby’s comments don’t look anything like retaliation against Joe Wilson—especially now that we know that Libby first mentioned Wilson and his wife to Judith Miller three weeks before Wilson went public with his op-ed piece.” (Emphasis added.)

Indeed, as Bush-haters are salivating at the possibility that Rove might be indicted, so certain are they that he sought to slime Mr. Wilson, they ignore how little Mr. Rove actually said to the media about Ms. Plame. Indeed, so far, I have yet to find any evidence that he ever mentioned her name to anyone at all, much less a reporter (before that name became common knowledge).

It seems Rove addressed the matter only two times, once merely acknowledging that he was aware that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. When columnist Robert Novak mentioned to him that “he had learned that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA,” Rove replied, “I heard that, too.” The second time was when Rove warned Time reporter Matt Cooper “not to ‘get too far out on Wilson‘” as it was his wife “who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.”

It is clear from those comments that, as Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin put it, his client “was trying to discourage Time magazine from circulating false allegations about Cheney, not trying to encourage them by saying anything about Wilson or his wife.” But, so eager are Bush’s critics to smear Karl Rove that they read his attempt to kill a story as a strategem to slime an administration critic.

Interestingly, it is Rove’s failure to remember that conversation with Cooper that could get him into trouble. In his latest post on this issue, JustOneMinute‘s Tom Maguire (via Instapundit) suggests Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may be weighing a perjury charge against Rove. Rove did not initially tell “tell grand jurors that he talked to TIME correspondent Matthew Cooper about Plame.” Methinks Fitzgerald would have a tough time proving perjury given that Rove “returned to the grand jury” as soon as Luskin alerted him to an e-mail he had sent mentioning the conversation.

While those with a low opinion of Rove will suggest that he deliberately deceived the grand jury, we all often forget conversations we have had, especially on topics not particularly significant to us. Given Rove’s limited commentary on the Plame matter, it seems clear this wasn’t an item high on his agenda. Not only that. It seems that in the conversations where he addressed the issue, he barely devoted much time to them, thus, they would be more likely to slip his mind.

I too have often forgotten conversations I have had — even posts I have written. Occasionally when reviewing this blog’s archives, I discover posts that I had forgotten about. Had you asked me if I had blogged on such and such topic (before I reviewed the archives), I might have said I never blogged on that. But, then should someone send me the link, I would, as Mr. Rove has done, immediately acknowledge the error. The fact that Rove voluntarily returned to the grand jury suggests that the conversation slipped his mind. A strong defense against a perjury charge.

Focusing on Karl Rove’s alleged misdeeds, the media has largely remained silent on Mr. Wilson’s. While most of the MSM describes Wilson as a critic of the Administration, as I noted here and here, in articles on the investigation, the LA Times neglected to mention that he’s a liar who has publicly misstated the circumstances of his being hired for his mission to Niger and who “gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading.” Indeed, in an article this past Saturday, the LA Times once again notes Wilson’s criticisms of the Administration in his celebrated July 6 New York Times op-ed without mentioning that a Senate Intelligence Committee report discredited much of what he said in that piece.

It’s not just the LA Times. The New York Times seems eager to ignore that report as well. According to the Weekly Standard‘s Stephen F. Hayes, in a timeline accompanying “a lengthy, front-page article detailing the work of two senior Bush administration officials, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, on the Niger-uranium story,” that paper omitted to include the date (July 7, 2004) the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released the aforementioned report. As Hayes puts it:

The Senate report includes a 48-page section on Wilson that demonstrates, in painstaking detail, that virtually everything Joseph Wilson said publicly about his trip, from its origins to his conclusions, was false.

This is not a minor detail. The Senate report, which served as the source for much of the chronology in this article, is the definitive study of the events leading up to the compromising of Valerie Plame. The committee staff, both Democrats and Republicans, read all of the intelligence. They saw all of the documents. They interviewed all of the characters. And every member of the committee from both parties signed the report.

While the MSM and Bush critics bloviate about Karl Rove’s alleged misdeeds, they ignore those of Joe Wilson, treating him as some kind of innocent victim in this, an honest man who sought only to expose the truth about the Administration’s case for war in Iraq. The media dwell on Rove’s minor infractions while neglecting Wilson’s major ones. Not pointing out that he worked on the Kerry campaign — until the Senate report discredited him — and not even mentioning that report or other evidence of his dishonesty.

Once again, it seems that many in the MSM would rather attack President Bush and his allies than offer an honest assessment of his Administration. His critics are especially eager to malign Mr. Rove. Perhaps, Mr. Fitzgerald has information of which I am not aware which proves to be incriminating to Rove. Barring that, there seems little in the public record to indict this good man.

The image of Rove as a diabolical henchmen ever eager to smear his boss’s every opponent exists only in the minds of Mr. Bush’s strongest critics, those with the greatest interest in seeing the man the president described as the “architect” of his re-election behind bars.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

UPDATE: Powerline offers a good analysis of a piece by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on this topic. As I read the piece myself, I wondered how Dionne thinks mentioning Plame’s name to a reporter (or in Rove’s case, noting that she helped her husband get a job) is “attacking their adversaries without pity.”

UP-UPDATE: Steve wonders why Joe Wilson lied. (H/T: Polipundit.)

Comments

  3. GayCowBoyBob has a point. Go back and check your old posts. GP and GPW have edited your posts.

    I don’t know if GCB has gone back and checked his older posts where you guys have edited his post as opposed to creating new posts. Very sneaky.

    Damn…..at leat Synova tries….

  5. My warning to GayCowboyBob is that the “editors” are going back in time and editing existing posts of his…..thus hey don’t have to respond in “real time”.

    [ We can edit your posts too, Monty 🙂 –Ed.]

    Just a “head’s up”. Is that fair??

    monty

  10. I’m curious after all this time why the Left actually thinks Karl Rove (the evil genius that he is) would be so a) foolish, b) petty, c) sloppy, and d) obsessed that he’d go so far as to waste his time with what they think he’s done here.

    I mean, let’s look at the logic of this: If Rove were as evil and craven as the Left thinks he is, wouldn’t he have gone to the trouble to find out if “outing” Plame would have acutally caused trouble for her or Wilson in the first place? And isn’t it clear to anybody paying attention that there was no “blowing her cover”, given her husband was galavanting around writing op-ed pieces for the NYT and she was marching in the front door of the CIA daily and leaving twice a week with a paycheck?
    If Rove’s plan was to intimidate critics of the WH, I imagine he’d have picked a much craftier way to do it. On the other hand, if the Left actually thinks that Rove thought this would prove as an example that future whistle-blowers should keep their traps shut, it’s no wonder he’s constantly out-witting them in electoral politics.

  14. I don’t know how you can look at the “facts” of what Rove said or didn’t say regarding Plame without the conclusion of the Grand Jury taking place first, which won’t be for a few more days. Right now there is not enough information out there to make any real assumption either way.

    One thing is certain however, and that is the attack dog mentality of the President’s administration whenever anyone disagrees with them publicly. Notable examples that come to mind are the smearing of John McCain during the GOP primaries. The GOP plays a tough and dirty game. So do the Democrats, but the GOP is better at it.

    They all just shovel shit back and forth day in and day out. And then they wonder why people are cynical about their “Grand Visions” etc. Bah.

    Incidentally, have you noticed that in spite of all his grand visions that the President’s poll numbers are still tanking as a downward spiral? No matter how many photo ops he does with wounded troops he just can’t seem to get the American public to believe in his competency anymore. Gee, must be yet another liberal media plot.

  16. #12
    Dan,
    We must all be patient regarding the Plame investigation.
    Nobody may be indicted at all.
    People may be.
    We must be patient.
    As for proving that lies were made, I shall leave that up to ones peers.
    Isn’t that the American way.
    I’ll even trot out the “innocent until proven guilty”.
    Which if it applied to Clinton, means that
    he was indicted (impeached) but not convicted, found guilty, so HE IS INNOSCENT!
    Interesting how the worm turns.

  17. Patrick (#14)–I just don’t see the Administration attacking anyone who disagrees with them publicly. Please provide some examples made since the president was first elected in 2000.

    As to the president’s declining poll numbers, much has to do with him losing the support of the GOP base. Up until this year, his approval (at least in no poll that I saw) fell below 90% among Republicans. And lately, it’s taken a nosedive. The last number I saw showed his approval among Republicans below 80. And that was before the Harriet Miers pick which has angered many conservatives.

  19. Chandler, I did take a look at the link at #6. If true, that demotion, however, doesn’t count as attacking.

    As to your link in #18, I clicked on it, then saw that it was a post written by Arianna Huffington. Given the lateness of the hour and her reputation, I didn’t need read further. Nothing of substance there.

  21. #14
    “I don’t know how you can look at the “facts” of what Rove said or didn’t say regarding Plame without the conclusion of the Grand Jury taking place first, which won’t be for a few more days. Right now there is not enough information out there to make any real assumption either way.”
    -Patrick (Gryph)

    #16
    “Dan,
    We must all be patient regarding the Plame investigation.
    Nobody may be indicted at all.
    People may be.
    We must be patient.”
    -chandler in hollywood

    Since the first accusation that Karl Rove might have had something to do with outing Plame, liberals have been calling for him to resign, for Bush to fire him and for him to be jailed. Now that we have much more information, it seems a bit odd to counsel patience.

    I’m reminded of election night 2004. When did I know that Bush had won? Not when liberals started to lose their gleefulness. Not when people started realizing that the exit polls seemed innaccurate. Not from anything on Fox News.

    It was when, all of a sudden, every liberal started talking about ‘whoever the next president is, he will have to work hard to bring the country together. He will have to make sure the feelings of the other side are taken into account.

    Slightly different situation, but wow, the Deja vu.

  22. “While Andrew Sullivan and others on the left”

    This blog is really getting pathetic. You seem to attack almost anyone who disagrees with Dear Leader Bush Administration as “left” or “liberal.” I’ve seen Sullivan lay out the best conservative critiques of the administration. Someone isn’t liberal just because they don’t swoon over the President.

  23. DinaFelice, patience? I don’t know… I think the LibLeft is waiting and hoping that something will come from the continued adverse speculation about Rove-Libby-Cheney roles… as anyone who’s traversed that course before a grand jury in a high profile case will attest, the questioning is a landmine filled field… prosecutors laying traps hoping to play gotcha with the targets in order to coerce additional and more damning testimony at a later date.

    Lewinsky ran into it with Starr –Cox tired it in the Watergate fiasco– and North nearly ran afoul of it before the Congress and elsewhere.

    If anyone thinks the prosecutorial effort is a “search for truth”, then I have a book for you on the “3 EQUAL branches of govt”; both are fairy tales better suited for 2nd Graders. Prosecutors in high profile cases aren’t truth seekers, they’re indictment seekers. And many Grand Juries serve as their witting tools. Some don’t; but most do.

    Besides, isn’t patience a virtue? When did anyone last think the LibLeft was virtuous about ANYthing?

  24. #22 — Re: Andrianna Sullington’s “conservatism.” Since when are massive taxes increases and judicially imposed social policies — both of which Andrianna advocates — conservative principles? For that matter, how many conservatives decided the war in Iraq wasn’t worth it because the president is opposed to gay marriage? How many conservatives endorsed John Kerry for president?

    Sullington was never a conservative. (He was an editor at The New Republic for Set’s sake.) He merely got the reputation because he’s not as screaming radical left as most of the gay establishment. Put him next to Larry Cramer, or Michaelangelo Signorile and he looks relatively conservative. The same way you can put Hillary next to Rosie O’Donnell and make her look relatively thin.

  25. “Indeed, as Bush-haters are salivating at the possibility that Rove might be indicted”

    This has been a wet dream on the left for quite a while now. They’re attempting to take out key members of the administration (and congress: Frist, Delay, etc) via legal investigations, smear tactics (yes Nancy Pelosi, I’m speaking to you!) and innuendo.

    If Karl, Bill or Tom (yes, I’m on a first name basis with all of them) are guilty of actual crimes, then prove it. Give us the evidence and witnesses. All I’ve seen is hearsay and inept reporters, and at this point I’m not convinced that an actual “crime” has been committed in the Plame and Frist cases.

    BTW: for all the effort the left has put into trying to convince the voters of “republican corruption run amuck” they might actually get better results (with the voters) with some new ideas, better programs, actual candidates who can take firm positions on everything from the WOT to the economy, and explain the benefits of these positions to the voters. It’s called an agenda. All I’m hearing from the left is “Bush is …..stupid, evil, dangerous, Hitler, corrupt, a puppet, controlled by Cheney, or Rove, or the neo cons, or Israel, or fill in your favorite here.

    Karl tells me he finds this investigation interesting. Shows how the media “produces” a story.

  27. The only “massive tax increase” I have seen Sullivan propose is a gas tax — echoing the call of Charles Kruthammer. Kruthammer holds the same social views as Sullivan, but no one could call him anything but conservative.

    Come to think of it, creating a flat-tax and increasing consumption taxes are a bedrock principle of a whole wing of conservatives (Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Dick Cheney). Although I’m not of that wing (I think consumption taxes are also a hinder to a free market), I don’t think those positions make them liberal.

    Sullivan basically proposes American-Thatcherism. You really can’t get more conservative than Thatcherism which (like Reaganism) was built upon the conservative principles of Von Hayek.

    As far as “judicially imposed social policies”, to what are you refering. Sullivan agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court when it found that the federal government had no constitutional right to jail gay citizens simply because they are gay. Thats a pretty conservative finding. Sullivan has also been a strong advocate for marriage equality as advanced by the people, as opposed to the courts.

    how many conservatives decided the war in Iraq wasn’t worth it because the president is opposed to gay marriage? I don’t know any, and neither did Sullivan. You make a flat-out false argument here.

    How many conservatives endorsed John Kerry for president?. Me, for one. About a dozen conservative editorial boards as well as conseravtive pundits. Councilmember David Cantania. A good friend of mine who quit his GOP position to volunteer for Kerry, several Republican army buddies of mine, and others. A lot of us are sick of the drunken spending of this administration. When a Republican administration is no different fiscally than a Democrat, you can look at other issues.

    Again, I started reading this site because I thought it was a gay conservative site. Unfortunately, it is dived into largely a pro-Republican site. Conservative critiques of this administration are chastised as “liberal” while liberal fiscal policies of the Bush Administration are ignored or excused. Most posters on here wouldn’t know the difference between Von Hayak and Von Dutch.

  28. A lot of us are sick of the drunken spending of this administration.

    So, you went for Kerry, a guy who was advocating $2.3 Trillion in spending beyond what Bush was already planning to spend? Yeah, that makes a whole lotta sense.

    I stand by my points. Sullington’s opinion-switch on the war can be tracked precisely to Bush’s opposition to same-sex marriage. Tax increases are not a conservative principle. If Sullington had proposed a consumption tax to replace the existing system of taxation, you might have had a point. But Sullington advocated his increase purely for revenue, while delighting that it would punish SUV owners (much like liberals do) and not affect him because he doesn’t drive. Isn’t that what liberals do… advocate higher taxes on other people? Sullington also endorses judicial activism when it suits his lifestyle, and the Texas sodomy case is a good example. He has also endorsed court-imposed same-sex marriage. You may agree or disagree with the merits of same-sex marriage, but celebrating when courts impose changes to cultural institutions by judicial fiat is not conservative.

    Republicans may have switched to Kerry, but I strongly doubt very many people grounded in true conservative principles would have signed on with candidate of Michael Moore, George Soros, the ACLU and MoveOn. In any case, Andrianna’s Kerry endorsement certainly does not make the case for his conservatism any stronger.

  29. V the K…your reduction to name-calling underscores my point. You do little but call a conservatize czar like Charles Kruthammer a liberal while making abstract correlations about opposition to particular military maneuvers.

  30. #16 – re: Clinton not being convicted by Senate –

    Chandler, you’re so funny.

    O.J. Simpson was also found “NOT GUILTY”. Do you believe for a minute that means O.J. was INNOCENT? Hah hah hah hah. A guy tried to sell me some lettuce mines the other day, Chandler, and I wasn’t interested, but I’ll refer him to you.

    Clinton stood in front of a microphone and said vehemently, “I did not have sex with that woman!!”, when he had. Nobody needs a Senate conviction to grasp that.

    That’s why Clinton was disbarred. You know what that means? Look it up. “Disbarred.” It means that even by the standards of slimy trial lawyers, Clinton was/is too big of a liar to EVER be allowed to practiced law again.

  34. Most posters on here wouldn’t know the difference between Von Hayak and Von Dutch.

    Well I at least know that Von Dutch is so over that not even Tara Reid would wear it now.

  35. Mike in #22, thanks for noticing that I referred to Andrew as a liberal. While there are many conservatives criticizing the president (see, e.g., this harsh piece by Robert Bork in today’s Wall Street Journal), it is no longer accurate to call Andrew a conservative — no matter what he says. As was alluded to in the comment thread, Charles Krauthammer (whom I believe I called one of my favorite columnists in a previous post or comment) has also faulted the president, particularly on the Miers nomination. Unlike Andrew, he is still a conservative.

    And QP in #26, that article you reference doesn’t much help your case–it shows that Bush castigated Rove for his role in the affair. But, something smells wrong about the article. I had heard this morning on Fox that McClellan denounced it, so I am dubious about its accuracy.

    Mike in #27–I do not chastise conservative critics of the Administration as liberal, only Andrew Sullivan. When I read his blog, Andrew he frequently advocated tax increases — and opposed tax cuts.

    As to this blog’s conservatism, I have also indicated several times my opposition to the spendthrift policies of the Administration and did an entire post faulting the president for not following the Gipper’s legacy of federalism.

    That said, you do remind me that I need to make clear my support for greater fiscal discipline. I regret that I have not called the president — or congressional Republicans — to task more often for not holding the line on spending.

  36. #31 Heh… though I thought it was for not sending in her dues, which isn’t at all impressive even if it’s not even close to the same as disbarred.

    #27 & #28 Are you two talking about the same person? I’m reading Sullivan and Sullington and I’m confused.

    #27 It’s a bit tiring, but I think that unless I (or anyone else who comments here) starts foaming at the mouth and denouncing Bush as Hitler no one will hear the criticisms expressed. No, we worship Bush. We swoon over Bush. It’s so much baloney. I’m not the least bit pleased with the Republicans fiscal policy (they’ve got one?) and the whole concept of “Homeland Security” scares me… though I can’t lay that on the Republicans exclusively since the anti-war folks tend to push for us to stop our foreign adventuring and make us safe at home instead. Howling that “your just a danged liberal” isn’t particularly useful, but neither is the opposite, that anyone not condenming every breath Bush takes is an unthinking goose-stepper.

  37. From the Asia Times article cited in #6:

    “When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the casualties of the Bush administration – not the countless (or rather uncounted) Iraqis, or the ever-growing list of American troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in the administration’s war of convenience – but the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming.”

    The entire article is a hackneyed smear piece.

  38. Oh my people, I tried to include a 😉 in my comment about Miers. I was kidding. I read numerous conservative blogs, and GayPatriotWest…you are wrong about Sullivan. He constantly writes about tax cuts, and the only tax-increase I have seen him advocate is a gas tax. So, he is no different than Kruthammer in that respect.

    Lets be honest. People call pundits like Sullivan liberal because he didn’t support the reelection of George W. Bush. Thats all, no matter how hard you spin it. This website is all about kissing the ass of the Bush Administration, not advancing conservative principles.

  39. #36 — Andrianna Sullington is my affectionate nickname for Andrew Sullivan, formed by commingling the names Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington: Both of whom are effete foreigners with silly accents, who were both once considered (somewhat) conservative but are now raging BDS cases, and both of whom have slept with gay men.

  41. “I regret that I have not called the president — or congressional Republicans — to task more often for not holding the line on spending.”

    GPW-, it’s more than that they didn’t hold the line on spending, that implies that there fault was that they simply failed to hold in check someone elses excesses. What they did was far worse than that.

    Right after they took over Congress the GOP started behaving like Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory, gorging themselves on all the money they could scoop up with fat little greedy fingers. And like Gloop, they should be flushed down the drain.

    What we need is some good old fashioned gridlock and divided government. That seems to be the only method that works to reign in out-of-control spending and Government oversight. Clearly, having one or the other party in sole control just doesn’t work. We often complain that our elected officials aren’t accomplishing anything. But thats really a good thing. I’d much rather have them be unsuccessful politicians than effective ones. Effective ones are too expensive and tend to expand the reach of Government too far into our private lives.

  42. “As to your link in #18, I clicked on it, then saw that it was a post written by Arianna Huffington. Given the lateness of the hour and her reputation, I didn’t need read further. Nothing of substance there.”

    Actually, GPW, you should check it out. For the most part she is quoting directly from their resignation letters. You can skip over her commentary easy enough if it starts to make you feel queasy. 😉

  43. Resignation letters from disgruntled bureaucrats??

    It’s hard to imagine a pettier, less worthwhile source of “insight” into any Administration. (Be it Bush, Clinton or what have you. If the elected political Administration isn’t pissing off a whole lot of careerists, they aren’t shaking things up – Aren’t doing their job.)

  45. Mike in #38, if you think this web-site is about kissing the a** of the Bush Administration, you haven’t been reading all our posts.

    And no, you simply can no longer call Andrew Sullivan a conservative though you may be right that he’s not a liberal. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

    Actually, Patrick in #41, the GOP didn’t go Augustus Gloop (as you put it) on spending until sometime in the late 1990s, like about 1999 when both the GOP in Congress and the Democrat in the White House (Clinton) relaxed the fiscal discipline that they had promoted for the 4 years previously. House Republicans were actually quite good on spending in the first two terms in the majority.

    Divided government worked well from 1995-99, but then it become a mess.

    Let’s see if the Republican Study Committee can have some success in restoring my party to its Reaganite principles. I’m pretty optimistic, but then like the Gipper, I am often optimistic.

    And once again, my critics remind me I need to post more on the GOP’s spending excesses, their betrayal of the Gipper’s ideals.

  46. The only “crime” that Rove and Libby have committed is getting too chummy with the liberal media.
    So you suppose Rove should have followed the Clinton handbook on giving testimony?

    FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES: In the portions of President Clinton’s Jan. 17 deposition that have been made public in the Paula Jones case, his memory failed him 267 times. This is a list of his answers and how many times he gave each one.

    I don’t remember – 71
    I don’t know – 62
    I’m not sure – 17
    I have no idea – 10
    I don’t believe so – 9
    I don’t recall – 8
    I don’t think so – 8
    I don’t have any specific recollection – 6
    I have no recollection – 4
    Not to my knowledge – 4
    I just don’t remember – 4
    I don’t believe – 4
    I have no specific recollection – 3
    I might have – 3
    I don’t have any recollection of that – 2 I don’t have a specific memory – 2
    I don’t have any memory of that – 2
    I just can’t say – 2
    I have no direct knowledge of that – 2
    I don’t have any idea – 2
    Not that I recall – 2
    I don’t believe I did – 2
    I can’t remember – 2
    I can’t say – 2
    I do not remember doing so – 2
    Not that I remember – 2
    I’m not aware – 1
    I honestly don’t know – 1
    I don’t believe that I did – 1
    I’m fairly sure – 1
    I have no other recollection – 1
    I’m not positive – 1
    I certainly don’t think so – 1
    I don’t really remember – 1
    I would have no way of remembering that – 1
    That’s what I believe happened – 1
    To my knowledge, no – 1
    To the best of my knowledge – 1
    To the best of my memory – 1
    I honestly don’t recall – 1
    I honestly don’t remember – 1
    That’s all I know – 1
    I don’t have an independent recollection of that – 1
    I don’t actually have an independent memory of that – 1
    As far as I know – 1
    I don’t believe I ever did that – 1
    That’s all I know about that – 1
    I’m just not sure – 1
    Nothing that I remember – 1
    I simply don’t know – 1
    I would have no idea – 1
    I don’t know anything about that – 1
    I don’t have any direct knowledge of that – 1
    I just don’t know – 1
    I really don’t know – 1
    I can’t deny that, I just — I have no memory of that at all – 1

    http://prorev.com/legacy.htm

  47. #46 TGC — (From NRO) Some other notable differences between what the Clintons did and what Bush/Rove haven’t done:

    1. The Bush White House hasn’t formed an organized crime-style joint defense agreement

    2. The Bush White House hasn’t asserted novel or nonexistent legal privileges

    3. The Bush White House hasn’t claimed that prosecutors acted unethically or for political reasons.

    All of that was done by the Clinton defense team in the Lewinsky matter. And all of it was done while the Starr investigation was taking place and before any charging decisions had been made.

  48. 1. The Bush White House hasn’t formed an organized crime-style joint defense agreement

    2. The Bush White House hasn’t asserted novel or nonexistent legal privileges

    3. The Bush White House hasn’t claimed that prosecutors acted unethically or for political reasons.

    They don’t need to. Ken Mehlman does it for them.

  52. “While Andrew Sullivan and others on the left…”

    and then this:

    “Andrianna Sullington is my affectionate nickname for Andrew Sullivan, formed by commingling the names Andrew Sullivan and Arianna Huffington: Both of whom are effete foreigners with silly accents, who were both once considered (somewhat) conservative but are now raging BDS cases, and both of whom have slept with gay men.”

    Cartoonish almost, with the latter bordering on a bad drag show skit…