Just in case you thought I was being overly dramatic yesterday with my claim that our president believes he is a king, today I give you evidence direct from the White House itself.
Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge yesterday that they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
The officials, who include senior White House adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, argued that the judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the couple that stemmed from the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media.The suit claims that Cheney, Libby, Rove and former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage violated the couple's privacy and constitutional rights by publicly revealing Plame's identity in an effort to retaliate against Wilson. Plame's identity was disclosed in a syndicated column in July 2003, days after Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate Iraq's nuclear threat and justify an invasion.
Libby was convicted in March of lying to a grand jury investigating the leak.
The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?
"That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."
They honestly believe that the laws do not apply to them. So long as they believe themselves to be performing their official duties, they believe they are the law.
UPDATE: Digby:
...the fact is that a very large number of right wing legal scholars seem to have the unusual view that a president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors if he lies about a sexual affair but he has ultimate authority to do anything he chooses in his role as president. I find this a little bit strange....Lying to cover up unauthorized presidential fellatio was a grave threat to the constitution. Impeach! But today, as the government endorses torture, indefinite imprisonment without access to a lawyer (and more that we still don't know about) these lecturers about "honor and integrity" are writing snide and shallow op-eds in the Washington Post defending the president even when he was so insistent on his dictatorial prerogatives that he sent his henchmen to the bedside of a sick man on drugs to coerce him into signing off on illegal, unconstitutional programs.
The American conservative project is morally and intellectually bankrupt. There is nothing left but the decaying corpse of a once great political philosophy, surrounded by a bunch of vultures and jackals feeding off its fetid flesh.
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