Criminalizing Conservatives

by William Kristol - October 24, 2005 - The Weekly Standard

The most effective conservative legislator of--oh--the last century or so, Congressman Tom DeLay, was indicted last month for allegedly violating Texas campaign finance laws, and has vacated his position as House majority leader. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, is under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for his sale of stock in the medical company his family started.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby have been under investigation by a special federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, for more than two years. When appointed in 2003 by the Bush Justice Department, Fitzgerald's mandate was to find out if the leaking to reporters of the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was a violation of a 1982 statute known as the Philip Agee law, and if so, who violated it. It now seems clear that Rove and Libby are the main targets of the prosecutor, and that both are in imminent danger of indictment.

What do these four men have in common, other than their status as prosecutorial targets? Since 2001, they have been among the most prominent promoters of the conservative agenda of the Bush administration.

Criminalizing Republicans is not new. Democrats never stopped trying to find something that they could impeach Ronald Reagan over. They even invented a crime that never existed to try and criminalize some of his leading officials.

Democrats have been totally defensive of any accusations about democrats though. Abuse of power by Clinton (and credible charges of rape) was excused since he "was such a good President". That did not stop him from having his law license taken after he was out of office because he was in fact guilty of the crimes for which he was impeached. Stopping his conviction did not make him innocent. It just proved that the democratic party did not care what crimes he committed as long as he was a democrat.

The democratic party is becoming more and more vicious with their comments and accusations. Republicans "never worked a day in their lives". "Evil". "Brain dead". "Culture of corruption". Accusations with no basis in fact are hurled around constantly. The example of Tom Delay is typical. The democrats have been calling him a criminal for over a year. It now turns out that two grand juries "no billed" some of the charges but the democrat district attorney just went back and got a democrat judge controlled grand jury to indict. And it turns out Ronnie Earle, the D.A., does not have a copy of the alleged memo which forms the basis for his charges. He has a similar memo that he contends "implies" that the one on which he based the charges must surely have existed.

When did innocent until proven guilty cease being the American way? Probably about the time that democrats decided to criminalize being Republican.