Bulldogpundit does a nice write-up on a conference call he participated in that was organized by Patrick Ruffini and hosted by GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman, and with principal content devoted to the Alito nomination. Included in the post are links to write-ups by two other call participants, John Hawkins (”Right Wing News”) and Eric Erickson (”Redstate.Org”).

This blogger, for one, really appreciates it that these fellows share this information!

FOLLOW-UP: The Anchoress provides additional links regarding the teleconference.

It is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) who I will be focusing on to do his job and lead the Republican majority in the Senate in ensuring that the Alito nomination is given an up or down vote and that the vote itself is favorable; and, moreover, that if it is needed that the “Constitutional Option” is employed against obstructionist, liberal Democrats. High time Frist proved himself. This is as good a time as any.

Power Line has more.

This post by Leon H. at REDSTATE.ORG is precisely why I’m an avid reader of that site. The analysis is brisk and provocative.

Will Arlen Specter betray the Alito nomination owing to his preeminent position on the Senate Judiciary Committee as an avid Pro-Choice Republican? Will John McCain shed his well-earned RINO credentials to grandstand before the Republican majority in the Senate in order to enhance his presidential aspirations and recoup political capital lost in the Gang of 14 cave-in?

Film at Eleven!

FOLLOW-UP: Speaking of John McCain! (Courtesy of Wizbang!)

Here’s an online poll at Hugh Hewitt’s blog (with an assist from Patrick Ruffini) on your reaction to the nomination by President Bush of Judge Samuel Alito. Are you pleased or displeased, and, if the former, would you be in favor of the so-called “Constitutional Option” should Senate Democrats filibuster the nomination?

RESULTS OF POLLING TO-DATE

D.J. Drummond, a talented, well-regarded, Houston-area blogger-journalist and widely-read at the “Polipundit” site, is calling for a rapprochement among conservative bloggers on the heels of the Harriet Miers’ controversy. D.J. is rightly concerned that the bad blood coursing through portions of the center-right/right-of-center galaxy of the blogosphere may persist unless the conduct of the Miers’ debate and the damage it inflicted are addressed and ways of repairing it found. On this score, I say good for him.

D.J. writes:

One of the more regrettable effects of the Miers feuding here at Polipundit.com, and in the Conservative Movement in general, is the way that specific individuals were treated. Without relighting old fires by pointing to specifics, grossly undeserved insults were thrown at Conservatives by other Conservatives, purely spiteful articles were written and broadcast, and once the nomination was withdrawn, there were many on both sides which wished to continue the fighting. While it is certainly wise to pursue ways to put the matter behind us, and to repair the damage done, it would be very foolish, as some are trying to do, to ignore that real damage has been done, and that victories in the future depend on addressing the present condition.

The issue is not Miers now, but the Conservative Movement. Demanding people ignore the fact of very real injuries is simply not reasonable, nor would it be wise for people to seek to continue the feud. The question at hand is not an argument over things done, but the question about what to do to heal and regain momentum.

Of course, D.J. Drummond and certain other top-of-the-pyramid conservative bloggers with huge readerships (Hugh Hewitt certainly comes to mind) share to a degree in the manner in which the debate foundered on the rocks of ad hominem attacks and ridiculous claims that if one took issue with the selection by the president of Harriet Miers and urged the president to withdraw her name, then one was necessarily disloyal to the president, the Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and, as Hugh charged in a preposterous fit of pique on his radio talk show, by definition in favor of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Hugh, to his credit, eventually published a mea culpa of sorts; but then he turned right around and offended a number of us on the Right by publishing an Op-ED piece in, of all places, “The New York Times.” Persist in pummeling us if you must, Hugh, but not in the Gray Lady, as that’s piling on. You may think the NYT gives your viewpoints gravitas in assailing fellow conservatives who disagreed with you over Miers, but it does not. Some ego-trips should be forsaken in the interest of maintaining your enviable political stewardship in the blogosphere.

But, to D.J.’s question:

While we can dispute their number, there are Conservatives who voted in 2004, who are now inclined to sit out the next round. There are Conservatives who feel that they have been mocked and degraded, simply for their own principles, no less valid than the ideology which won the day against Miers. The Liberals, never reluctant to press an advantage, will certainly press this opening.

What, do you think, is the best thing to do to repair the damage?

First off, Mr. Drummond, dispense with “the idealogy that won the day” posturing when you’re trying to broker a resolution. Either broker one in a diplomatic fashion or remain an editorialist espousing your views; but, please, don’t mix the noble effort of the former with the polarization that ensued from the latter. You supported the president and wanted to see the process followed right on through to an up or down vote in the Senate. Fine. I understand your viewpoint and respect your right to give voice to it. I, on the other hand, felt betrayed by a president who earned my vote by committing to, if given the opportunity, the nomination of a SCOTUS candidate in the “Scalia-Thomas mold.” “Trust me” was attached to her nomination and, sorry, but I’m not a trusting soul, particularly when the nominee is a virtual cipher and there is not a body of evidence attesting to her Scalia-Thomas affinity. Nor am I a “bastard” for thinking as I do.

Now then, on to possible solutions, at least within the context of the woof and warp of conservatives who blog and decry judicial activism.

1) A return to “civility” is devoutly to be wished.

2) In what I expect will be near universal support among conservative polibloggers for Samuel Alito, the heavy-hitters in our midst should demonstrate the same loyalty and grace to polibloggers in the “tail of the blogosphere” who read, link, and trackback their posts (and blogroll their sites) that Harriet Miers showed the president in her prudent, selfless withdrawal as nominee to the SCOTUS. If more firepower would be a welcome event on behalf of the Alito nomination (and other important agenda items of the Conservative Movement), then draw us in and make the tent bigger. Give legitimacy to our viewpoints by recognizing us through links. Bush and every other president before him have won office through building and sustaining a coalition. The big-gun polibloggers need to be less a “West Wing” clique and more overseers of a broad-based coalition. Hierarchies are fine and top-of-the-pyramid positions in the blogosphere have been well-earned. Just broaden the base and recognize that lofty bully pulpits require solid foundations.

3) There should be a greater frequency of the polling of conservative polibloggers in determining their hot buttons and political opinions and such polling should be conducted using a broader base. Patrick Ruffini, John Hawkins, Glenn Reynolds, N.Z. Bear, and Professor Bainbridge have led in this area and are to be commended. But better, broader polling would give encouragement to the smaller readership blogs that their work on behalf of the conservative cause has merit and that that work should be given a larger voice. There is strength in numbers. As Hugh Hewitt wrote in his book “BLOG”:

The “tail” is simply the 95-99 percent of blogs that are not giant traffic getters. These are low- or medium-traffic generators, some getting ten visitors a day, some a hundred, some a few hundred. Their traffic is steady, but it isn’t growing at a great rate, if at all.

“The power of the tail” is the aggregate number of visitors, not to any particular blog within the tail, but collectively to all blogs on the tail, and the fact that these low- or medium-traffic blogs generally enjoy the trust of their visitors.

If a point of view or product makes its way throughout most of the blogs in the tail, the audience for that point of view or product will far outstrip even the largest audience for the biggest blogs.

What those of us in the “tail of the blogosphere” just witnessed in the Miers’ brouhaha were the top-tier polibloggers engaged in internecine warfare and in that woof and warp of political controversy and bilious broadsides on the Right we were relegated to the position of onlooker — hand-clappers on the respective sidelines, cheering one side or the other, but not allowed out onto the playing field. After all, if D.J. wants to do no more than broker a rapprochement among the principal architects of the Miers’ controversy in the conservative galaxy of the blogosphere, all he need do is get the top dozen or two dozen of the conservative polibloggers to make peace with one another and to rally behind Samuel Alito. I suspect that won’t be hard to do and with today’s announcement by the president I suspect that the “Friendship Bridge” has already been erected (or is presently under construction).

4) The question becomes is D. J. Drummond a bold diplomat and a “big picture” guy like the president he’s dedicated himself to? The grandest gesture of unity and peace-making would come from the forging of a grand center-right/right-of-center coalition of polibloggers in the blogosphere. And the fine examples of mentorship and stewardship by major, top-tier bloggers that would follow in drawing we in the tail into such a unified coalition would form the catalyst for the building of many more combat divisions on the Right, rather than the regrettable divisions in the Right born of needless internecine warfare. After all, it shouldn’t be all about artillary fire. Isn’t it high time that the foot soldiers be drawn into the campaign?

FOLLOW-UP: The Blogs For Bush site is posting on the formation of a coalition to back the Alito nomination and that activity has merit; however, do understand in my post that I’m suggesting a much broader, more comprehensive coalition in the blogosphere to advance the Conservative Movement and with identified, prioritized agenda items and the delegation of responsibilities by high-powered, blogger-stewards who embrace “the tail.”

Members of the left-wing Democratic Party cabal and their apologists have responded predictably to President Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito and the following provides proof positive that this time around the president has hit one out of the ballpark!

From Senator Ted Kennedy:

Rather than selecting a nominee for the good of the nation and the court, President Bush has picked a nominee whom he hopes will stop the massive hemorrhaging of support on his right wing. This is a nomination based on weakness, not on strength.

Although he is clearly intelligent and experienced on the bench, that is only the beginning of our inquiry. If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.

From Senator Harry Reid:

The nomination of Judge Alito requires an especially long hard look by the Senate because of what happened last week to Harriet Miers. Conservative activists forced Miers to withdraw from consideration for this same Supreme Court seat because she was not radical enough for them. Now the Senate needs to find out if the man replacing Miers is too radical for the American people.

I am disappointed in this choice for several reasons. First, unlike previous nominations, this one was not the product of consultation with Senate Democrats. Last Friday, Senator Leahy and I wrote to President Bush urging him to work with us to find a consensus nominee. The President has rejected that approach.

Second, this appointment ignores the value of diverse backgrounds and perspectives on the Supreme Court. The President has chosen a man to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, one of only two women on the Court. For the third time, he has declined to make history by nominating the first Hispanic to the Court. And he has chosen yet another federal appellate judge to join a court that already has eight justices with that narrow background. President Bush would leave the Supreme Court looking less like America and more like an old boys club.

From Senator Charles Schumer:

It is sad that the president felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America instead of choosing a nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor, who would unify us.

From Michael Moore’s site, in profiling the nominee:

Politics: Hard right, conservative, anti-abortion

From the DailyKos site:

Update [2005-10-31 9:33:18 by Armando]: Law Professor Jonathan Turley:

TURLEY: There will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court. This is a pretty hardcore fellow on abortion issues.

They don’t call him “SCALITO” for nothing.

FOLLOW-UP: Jason at Polipundit points to additional reactions from the whacky Left.

John Hawkins of the esteemed “Right Wing News” blog did another of his list of 200 right-of-center bloggers’ polls last night — “Most & Least Desired Nominees For The Supreme Court” — and enjoyed yet another under-whelming response — 37 bloggers or 18.5% of those polled.

Come on, Mr. Hawkins, how about reviewing that mailing list of yours against respondents over your last half-dozen to dozen surveys and strike some consistent non-responders and add some right-of-center bloggers who would respond more consistently (hint … hint) and delight in the process.

It gets so frustrating!

NOTE: I was going to send you an obseqious e-mail, but you indicate at your site that e-mailers to RWN should not hold their breath in awaiting a reply. So I’ve chosen to beg publicly!

First off, let me say that it is nice to have Hugh Hewitt back in the fold. Hugh supports Samuel Alito, as I suspect virtually all conservative bloggers do, and it’s great knowing we’ll all be pulling from the same end of the rope again. The brouhaha over Miers is history now. It’s time to join forces behind President Bush’s stellar selection (God, how I love writing that).

In the post I’ve linked to, Hugh provides addresses for the Senate Republicans who are a concern — members as they were of the “Gang of 14″ — with respect to whether or not they’ll rally behind the president’s nominee early and not buckle under the hurricane-force winds of outrage that will blow through the Senate chamber as a result of a bona-fide conservative jurist in the Scalia-Thomas mold being nominated.

I hope conservative readers of this blog will commence a writing campaign.

OF HELP TO MY READERS:

Here’s a link for those of you who want to e-mail Senators.

Here’s a link for finding addresses of Senators.

Here’s a link for an easy way to contact Senators (or, better yet, here).

Important set of phone numbers (courtesy of ProLifeBlogs).

FOLLOW-UP: Polipundit’s analysis of the fight ahead in the Senate is a MUST READ and he provides aessessments of individual Senators. (H/T: Frank Laughter at Common Sense Junction).

FOLLOW-UP II: Patterico points to what he terms “Ground Zero” of the upcoming Senate fight over the nomination of Samuel Alito and provides an important analysis.

FOLLOW-UP III: If you’re a Pro-Lifer, as I am, you should be heartened by the Alito nomination, as ProLifeBlogs reports.

FOLLOW-UP IV: Polipundit updates his earlier post (see above) and includes a link to NRO.

In nominating Judge Samuel Alito to the SCOTUS, President Bush has fulfilled his commitment to his conservative base to nominate justices to the United States Supreme Court in the mold of Scalia-Thomas — i.e., originalists committed to strict interpretation of the Constitution, rather than judicial activism born of invention. Judge Alito will make a superb conservative addition to the Court and I commend the president on his excellent choice and I commit my support to him and to Senate Republicans, who I expect to rally around the nominee and to ensure that Judge Alito is confirmed. The GOP had better get the job done. There had better be splendid leadership and toughness of purpose. If, as expected, the Kennedy-led, mindless-Reid cabal is intent on all out war pitting the Left against the Right, then bring it on.

The Associated Press (AP) has reported that President Bush has named Judge Samuel Alito of the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals this morning as his nominee to the United States Supreme Court to replace the seat being vacated by outgoing Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Conner and in the wake of Harriet Miers’ — his original nominee — withdrawal.

Unlike Miers, who has never been a judge, Alito, a jurist from New Jersey, has been a strong conservative voice on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, seated him there in 1990.

Judicial conservatives praise Alito’s 15 years on the Philadelphia-based court, a tenure that gives him more appellate experience than almost any previous Supreme Court nominee. They say his record shows a commitment to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, ensuring that the separation of powers and checks and balances are respected and enforced. They also contend that Alito has been a powerful voice for the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

As expected, obstructionist liberal Democrats are already posturing for a fight in the United States Senate to block confirmation of Alito, who they view as too conservative.

The Washington Post (registration required) reports:

Some Democrats, including minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), have threatened to oppose Alito, however. Immediately after the announcement, the liberal activist organization People for the American way announced the launch of a “massive national effort” to prevent Alito’s confirmation.

In nominating Alito, President Bush is able now to make a strong case for confirmation that he was hard-pressed to do for Harriet Miers. Alito’s resume easily trumps Miers’.

As WaPo reports:

Bush, fresh from withering criticism of Harriet Miers for her lack of judicial experience, stressed Alito’s many years of litigation experience, first arguing 12 cases before the Supreme Court and then as an appeals court judge. Bush said Alito was the most experienced nominee in 70 years. Fresh from questions about Mier’s intellect, Bush highlighted the fact that Alito went to the Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the prestigious law review. Bush called Alito “brilliant.”

Alito’s resume, including his service in the Reagan administration Justice Department, is very much unlike Miers’, who had no appellate experience, and very much like that of Chief Justice John Roberts, who had lots.

Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Alito served during the Reagan administration in the office of Solicitor General, which argues on behalf of the government in the Supreme Court.

Unlike Roberts, he has opined from the bench on both abortion rights, church-state separation and gender discrimination to the pleasure of conservatives and displeasure of liberals.

While he has been dubbed “Scalito” by some lawyers for a supposed affinity to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and his Italian-American heritage, most observers believe that greatly oversimplifies his record.

Alito is considered far less provocative a figure than Scalia both in personality and judicial temperament. His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.

Am Associated Press profile of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., published in the New York Times (registration required), contains the following (as excerpted):

Dubbed “Scalito” or “Scalia-lite,” a play not only on his name but his opinions, Alito, 55, brings a hefty legal resume that belies his age. He has served on the federal appeals court for 15 years since President George H.W. Bush nominated him in 1990. Before that Alito was U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey from 1987 to 1990, where his first assistant was Michael Chertoff, now the Homeland Security secretary. Alito was the deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration from 1985 to 1987 and assistant to the solicitor general from 1981 to 1985. His New Jersey ties run deep. Alito, the son of an Italian immigrant, was born in Trenton and attended Princeton University. He headed to Connecticut to receive his law degree, graduating from Yale University in 1975. Among his noteworthy opinions was his lone dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Third Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

Former appellate judge Timothy Lewis, who served with Alito, has ideological differences with him but believes he would be a good Supreme Court justice. “There is nobody that I believe would give my case a more fair and balanced treatment,” Lewis said. “He has no agenda. He’s open-minded, he’s fair and he’s balanced.”

On the bench, Alito is known to be probing, but more polite than the often-caustic Justice Antonin Scalia, to whom he is sometimes compared. In high school, he competed in debate with his younger sister Rosemary. His style is considered quiet and thoughtful.

FOLLOW-UP: One can never do better than to read Michelle Malkin and she provides a wealth of links here on the Alito nomination.

The Washington Post (registration required) isn’t much off the mark in its editorial today in describing those shortcomings of the president and oversights in his and his team’s planning that have come to bedevil him and his administration early in his second term. Of note is that WaPo is fair-minded in its reference to the federal indictment handed down against Scooter Libby and, in terms of the war in Iraq, it faults the president more for a failure in planning for a reconstruction than for the merits of the invasion itself.

While not a litany that conservatives would wholeheartedly agree with, on substance it’s far from a hit piece and more balanced than one might anticipate.

Excerpts follow:

But unquestionably Mr. Bush is in trouble, and if he is to recover, he needs to acknowledge the root causes of his misfortunes. There may be less to learn from the indictment of Mr. Libby, whose alleged perjury appears to be the result of his own miscalculations, than from some other recent stumbles. Ms. Miers’s failed Supreme Court candidacy, for one, is emblematic of a broader and persistent Bush failing: a lack of intellectual seriousness, which goes hand in hand with his excessive trust in loyalists.

Mr. Bush’s impatience with policy minu-

tiae also leads him to advance positions without thinking them through. He prefers to offer bold ideas over effective ones, to take credit for easy victories without making hard choices. He has cut taxes and said he wants spending to be cut, too, but his officials have no plausible scenario for how the budget can be restored to balance. He set out to reform Medicare, the most ruinous of all the entitlement programs, and ended up with a law that made it vastly more expensive. He invaded Iraq in the hope of spreading democracy through the region, among other reasons, but his officials failed to plan for reconstruction. In confronting al Qaeda, Mr. Bush rightly grasped that this was a new kind of war that demanded new ways of fighting. But he pursued that broad conviction with a counterproductive indifference to substance, taking positions on civil liberties that harmed U.S. standing and that the Supreme Court later ruled untenable.

If Mr. Bush is to revive his presidency, there can be no substitute for sweating the detail; the choices that reach the president’s desk are never going to be the easy ones. A host of issues awaits his attention, from China’s military buildup to militant Iran, from post-hurricane reconstruction to the recommendations from his tax commission to the Supreme Court vacancy. Each of these represents an opportunity for Mr. Bush to reassert his authority by advancing the nation’s interests. But to do that he needs to grapple with hard issues in fresh, creative ways — a challenge that may in turn require him to recruit fresh thinkers to his inner circle.

POSTSCRIPT: The WaPo editorial does not mention the illegal immigration/porous borders problem in terms of “the host of issues that await his (the president’s) attention.” That is a careless, but telling oversight. No doubt if the Congress and the president had their way, the indifference would continue unabated and the “poor people willing to do jobs that Americans refuse to do” canard would continue to justify an invasion born of the need for so-called “cheap labor” that is, in point of fact, taxpayer-subsidized labor, as well as the desire for Latino voters without, were politicians to have their way, the need for any I.D. at the polling place. But Americans in both Red and Blue states — indeed more than just a simple majority — are fed up and view Homeland Security and 11+ million illegal aliens in our country as a gross contradiction in terms. They’re not fooled by the rhetoric. They know national security is threatened. They want something done, and they want it done now, and they want tighter border enforcement first, long before they’ll entertain amnesty disguised as Guest Worker Programs — programs that the federal government can’t possibly manage any better than it does its other White Elephants. Border security shouldn’t get short shrift in the MSM and particularly on the editorial pages.

I’m convinced that the last thing President Bush needs on his plate right now is a lecture from the Prince of Wales on how best to show more tolerance to Islams. The Anchoress terms the prince “daft,” and a congenital “do-nothing.” Frank Laughter, on news of the Prince of Rails’ intentions, found his systolic reading going through the roof!

Hyscience points to Bill Kristol’s prognostication that President Bush’s post-Miers-withdrawal nominee to the SCOTUS will be Samuel Alito. Insiders, however, are claiming the president has distilled his short list down to but two choices — Judges Samuel Alito of New Jersey and Michael Luttig of Virginia — without claiming one or the other as a certainty. Apparently the distaff side of the short list has been abandoned. I still hold out hope for my choice: Janice Rogers Brown.

Interesting is that Harriet Miers is spending the weekend at Camp David with the president to help him in his selection process. What a task: discerning among the candidates who offers those things that Miers, herself, did not! Isn’t that carrying a cross a second time up Golgotha? I feel for her and continue to applaud her selfless act of patriotism in serving the best interests of President Bush and the nation.

FOLLOW-UP: Patterico — say it isn’t so, PLEASE! The president kow-towing to Pro-Choice Arlen Specter of all RINOs?

FOLLOW-UP II: Another perspective on Arlen Specter from Polipundit.

FOLLOW-UP III: Bulldogpundit weighs in on Samuel Alito and Arlen Specter and pulls no punches.

NOTE TO READERS: President Bush has returned to the White House from Camp David and could possibly make an announcement today on his new nominee in order for media coverage Monday morning.

Captain Ed links to a Los Angeles Times’ piece on the brutal, illegal immigrant gang, Mara Salvatrucha — known in its abbreviated street parlance as “MS-13″ — whose “50,000 international hardcases” operate in at least 33 states now and is, as Captain Ed duly notes, a product of failed immigration policies, porous borders, and an egregiously misguided past declaration of amnesty for illegals within our midst. As I have written any number of times, not all illegal border jumpers are hapless lettuce-harvesters trying desperately to improve their lot in life, as open borders’ apologists would have you believe.

This writer has covered MS-13 in a number of posts and devoted particular attention to the brutal killing of a Houston-area toddler, Aiden Naquin, who was allegedly gunned down at near point-blank range by a 19-year-old Salvadoran MS-13 gang member, Miguel Angel Castro, while the little boy sat strapped into a child’s safety seat in the backseat of his father’s car.

And know that this gang was sent to the Arizona desert to target Minutemen.

Keep this gang and its brutal, nefarious activities in the forefront of your mind when you eventually weigh the pluses and minuses of whatever immigration reform legislation the Bush Administration eventually endorses next year. And I encourage you to insist of your Congressmen that much tighter border security enforcement be implemented first before any amnesty for illegals disguised as Guest Worker Programs are trumpeted by misguided elected officials bowing to pressures from business’ and Latino activists’ interests.

The Houston Chronicle’s Washington D.C.-based columnist, Cragg Hines, is this newpaper’s long-standing poster boy for its left-leaning political slant and what it chooses with a modicum of discretion not to publish on its editorial pages, it has Hines do in his nasty-gram Op-Ed columns. And Hines, you should no, has no use for certain of us right-of-center bloggers who he has previously termed neander-bloggers and card-carrying members of a Houston-area coven.

This morning’s hatchet-piece, published in the Sunday edition’s “Outlook” section, is vintage Cragg Hines. He opens:

So this is the administration led by a man who repeatedly swore “to uphold the honor and the dignity” of the presidency. That super-righteous routine, which was to be performed by George W. Bush with his hand on the Bible, is now laughable.

The only thing “laughable” is Hines’ outrageous statement. Bush has not been impeached, has not pontificated on what the meaning of is is before a Grand Jury, has, in the Reagan tradition, worn a suit of clothes while working in the Oval Office, has not engaged in sexual trysts with White House interns, and has diligently apllied himself to the nation’s business, including the global war on terror, rather than being distracted, as was his predecessor, by the consequences of rank appetities.

The first paragraph of Hines’ column alone qualifies it for duty at the bottom of a bird cage. But, alas, it gets worse. And no surprise that he tries valiantly to paint the president with a broad stroke of corruption and scandal on the basis of an indictment just returned against Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff.

Hines writes:

Possible criminality aside and earlier denials notwithstanding, it is clear that both I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff after being indicted Friday, and Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who remains under investigation, trafficked in the identity of a CIA operative.

Possible criminality aside means that Scooter Libby is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty (but Hines doesn’t want to let that sort of quibbling get in the way) and earlier denials notwithstanding means that even if Fitzgerald was admittedly unable to find any evidence that any federal laws had been violated — i.e., the original grounds for the investigation — in the so-called “outing” of a CIA operative, Hines then chooses to term the legal conversation between two high-level Bush Adminstration officials carrying top security clearances trafficking. Nice try, Cragg, but your dog don’t hunt.

Clearly, Cragg Hines is unsatisfied with and disgruntled over Fitzgerald’s findings or lack thereof. And he fails in the bitterness of his column to heed the words of Fitzgerald:

But I think what we see here today, when a vice president’s chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, it does show the world that this is a country that takes its law seriously; that all citizens are bound by the law.

But what we need to also show the world is that we can also apply the same safeguards to all our citizens, including high officials. Much as they must be bound by the law, they must follow the same rules.

So I ask everyone involved in this process, anyone who participates in this trial, anyone who covers this trial, anyone sitting home watching these proceedings to follow this process with an American appreciation for our values and our dignity.

Let’s let the process take place. Let’s take a deep breath and let justice process the system.

So take a deep breath, Cragg, what you claim to be true was, in point of fact, not proven whatsoever by the Fitzgerald-led, two year investigation and no indictments were returned to that effect by the federal grand jury. Indeed, your claim is and remains unfounded:

What emerges from the scenario laid out in the Libby indictment is that the Bush administration was most interested in discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, husband of Valerie Plame Wilson.

Ambassador Wilson’s sin in the eyes of the White House was coming up with an answer that the administration did not want to hear: that there was no credible evidence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium ore in the African nation of Niger. That was based on a trip Wilson made to the region in 2002 at the behest of the CIA. Wilson’s report put yet another chink in the administration’s argument that Saddam Hussein had and was developing weapons of mass destruction.

It only emerged in your twisted, MSM-style way of distorting fact and pandering to the Left’s fictions, Cragg.