Political Jokes

The I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial in Washington is suddenly getting interesting. The former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney is on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation of who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. Libby - who hasn't even been forthcoming on the origin of his nickname or the meaning of his first initial - is accused of lying about having heard about Plame from reporters, with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald insisting that Libby already knew about her. Now we find out from Judith Miller, the former New York Times columnist who ironically sacrificed her own credibility for journalistic integrity, that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Africa to check on a story about Saddam Hussein obtaining uranium there not by his wife or any other CIA agent but from the Vice President's office. . . who apparently set out to discredit Wilson once he insisted the uranium story was a crock.

So let's see. . . we've gone from the World Trade Center attack to a war with Iraq based on faulty intelligence and sloppy reasoning, to a discredited Saddam story, to an outed CIA agent, to a guy named. . . Scooter. :-O And now we could be headed for a constitutional crisis because of a guy named. . . Scooter. :-O

If Cheney is implicated even further in this scandal, it won't be long before both he and Bush are impeached, convicted and removed from office together and Nancy Pelosi becomes President.

Meanwhile, America's other potential first female President, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is being psychoanalyzed for her a joke she told about having the experience to deal with evil, bad men like Osama bin Laden in an obvious reference to her husband's marital indiscretion. As Chris Matthews pointed out, there's a world of difference between having an affair with an intern and killing three thousand people - not to mention the difference between having an affair with an intern and starting an unnecessary war based on lies. It's not the joke that has Hillary in a bind, it's her dubious attempts to explain the joke that's made it a big story. It not only undermines her credibility, it reveals her as someone trying to be something she's not, mainly a warm, charismatic person who lightens up effortlessly . . . but also someone who's able to tell a joke.

And the Democrats wouldn't nominate someone like that to run for President, would they?

Oh, wait . . .