Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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You have to wonder
[Read the article: Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a truly remarkable story, so much so that even the Washington Post's editors find it disturbing. The wonder to me is that GWB ever truly believed that he and his appointees could behave this way as a matter of routine, yet somehow prevent it from becoming common knowledge at some point.
The evidence -- indisputable, I think -- is that they tried, and now, to virtually no one's surprise except their own, they've failed. Many here think that Plan B will be to strong-arm and stonewall every critic, every investigator, until the next election.
Maybe so, but I doubt that under the circumstances, such a plan is any more likely to be successful than GWB's peculiar form of omerta has been. Will the Republican Party choose to throw kindling on its own funeral pyre, once it becomes clear that the price of colluding in GWB's intransigence is likely to require it? Very unlikely, I think. It's too soon for firm predictions, but there may yet come a time when the party will deputize someone to lay a (symbolic) revolver on the President's desk, just as it did in 1974.
I wonder who they'll choose. (I can't imagine, at this point, that they'll have any volunteers.)
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Interrogation
[Read the article: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1) How do you know it's illegal? We haven't even told you what it is.
2) John Ashcroft thought it was illegal, whatever it is.
3) No, he never said that. He said he couldn't be sure that it was legal.
4) Did he know what it is?
5) I can't tell you that.
6) If you were just wishing him well, what were all those papers in your hand?
7) Papers?
8) Why did you try to stop us talking to Mr. Ashcroft or Mr. Comey?
9) They worked for us, not for you, and what we do is secret. People don't talk about it. Or else.
10) Or else what?
11) I can't talk about it.
Does anyone besides me think that in this case, the judicious use of a rubber hose or even (gasp!) waterboarding might be justified, or perhaps extraordinary rendition to a basement somewhere in San Francisco? (I bet the Cycle Sluts would know how to get the information we need out of this bozo. Tick, tick, tick, and all that....)
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@ Karen M
[Read the article: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A bit dated, though, don't you think? I mean, really, Ma Bell? I did like the bit about the car gun and the personal gun, the KGB man with Oedipus problems, and what old hippy doesn't miss the comforts of a VW van now and again, but Ma Bell?
In those days, the impersonal evil made sense, somehow. Nowadays, it's all too personal.
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@ kwiatal
[Read the article: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, there was that business about Newt's divorce papers. Unpleasant jerks think alike, I guess.