Sure, I’ll hand you that one. “Subjective” is not the same as “arbitrary”, nor is it necessarily incompatible with “consistent”. If you’re a fan of “absolute” or “objective”, that leads us back to bryan’s definition: because he’s lied about anything else, he is now a liar. Thus I presume you are indeed rooting for Rove’s testimony to be a matter of public record and under oath. Me too.

With the Armitage analogy, I’ve got no problem handing you that one too. That Rove was not found directly guilty in that particular matter, fabulous. The relevance to the article at hand, about which this is a letters thread, is that Rove lied in a matter of similar gravity, thus his behavior needs to have oversight in this one, and it’s sadly hilarious that the administration would suggest otherwise.

From that standpoint it wouldn’t matter if Rove’s hands were spotless in the Plame matter, but if he lied during the course of discovering that (I believe, big shocker, that he did, and, um, this would be the entire point of the Conason piece), then he lied publicly on a matter of national interest. The USAGs are also a public matter of national interest, and yes this is about them. Drawing a map like this to obvious conclusions is far more difficult than actually reaching them.

Fishing expedition? Great. Let it be so. Another freebie for you. Fishing expeditions are enjoyed by the blameless, because they know what such will reveal (nothing), and backfire on the fishermen in a way that the fish would find spectacular. They also get to cry out about unjust persecution and the like, and turn it around on the fishermen.

On the matter of validity, I believe the issue at hand is the obstruction of justice via a politicization of USAG control, and the political advisor to POTUS would be a person of interest, yessiree bob. If Waxman were on the CC list for those e-mails, then yes, let him testify under oath as well. Anything else which may be of national consequence that should be exposed, Waxman, Pelosi, whoever? If you have grounds, go for it. I really don’t care which political party is in play here, and neither, I think, should anybody else.

I don’t think that this person being Constitutionally unappointed has much relevance either. If this person of interest were some corporate hack who wasn’t even an “official” presidential advisor, we wouldn’t be bringing up the Constitution to protect him either. If you’re going to go with legislative oversight on presidential appointments, then hell I’d also like the right to elect these goofballs, thanks very much.

You know, I’d like to think I could be a Republican and be saying this same thing. I believe that I could, and that there are. It’s just that the party’s current incarnation of leadership appears to be lacking on these principles. It’s about consistency of application. Haul Sandy Berger and the Clintons and whatever other person-who-ought-to-have-been-examined-harder person in, sure. Got no problem with that either. Bit late for that at this particular moment, but whatever. Rules is rules and rights is rights, as another esteemed poster pointed out.