The funniest quote I’ve seen in ages

July 28, 2005

Given what we’ve seen of late, you might assume I’m making this up, but this news report is real.

Democrats and their allies are demanding that Sen. Pat Roberts hold hearings on presidential advisor Karl Rove’s role in the unfolding Valerie Plame scandal.

But Roberts, who chairs the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, isn’t budging, saying that Rove’s role in the revealing of CIA agent Plame’s identity is already under investigation and that his critics are playing politics.

“The sharks are in the water,” he said. “Senate Intelligence has to be nonpartisan.”

That’s right, Pat Roberts is accusing us of playing politics, and pretending to care about non-partisanship on his committee. That would be the same Roberts who…

* prevented his Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from making any inquiry into the origins of the Niger forgeries;

* refuses to investigate the Plame scandal, but is prepared to investigate Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Plame scandal;

* believes the CIA does too much to keep their agents undercover;

* told a national television audience that Plame wasn’t really a covert agent, despite all evidence to the contrary;

* dismissed the need for Plame hearings in 2003, less than five days after the White House was notified about the criminal probe, because the controversy was, as he put it, “an old story“;

* defied comprehension by arguing in 2004, “If in fact [Saddam] didn’t have [WMD], why on earth didn’t he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war?”;

* and broke a promise to his colleagues (and the nation) in March 2005 by announcing that he would not allow his committee to prepare a report explaining how the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence on Iraq before the war began.

And now Roberts wants to lecture Dems about playing politics and the need for non-partisanship in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Simply breathtaking.

whats really breathtaking is the way Mr. Rockerfeller and other senate dems on this committee are going to thank Mr. Roberts for his courageous leadership on the sunday shows…

  • Let’s hope Congress stays out of it.

    During Iran-Contra the congressional investigations gave immunities which helped the miscreants avoid the legal consequences of their actions. It would be a shame if That happened again.

  • Unfortunately, a lot of people who aren’t paying close attention are going to assume Roberts is right and it’s politics as usual.

  • To get a real glimpse at Roberts and his hypocrisy, read the statement he issued on the day he voted to impeach President Clinton. It is posted on Ameriroots website, dated feb 25, 1999. He has no credibility, and should resign from the committee…

  • What’s amazing is that the affair de Plame is being investigated at all. From that tiny crack in the Republican earthworks their entire empire is beginning to crumble…

    I’ve been saying since this all began:

    The viciousness of going after Joe Wilson and his wife traces all the way to the top. Bush is not an apathetic non-observer. His meanness is writ large on all this. My bet is he had a temper tantrum over the news of Wilson’s various words. My bet is he gave the orders to “get Wilson.”

    So of course Roberts is going to act like a little boy trying to plug the dike with his fingers.

    And of course Roberts is going to try to subvert the investigation.

    He has to.
    The THRONE is threatened.

  • Cin,

    It is posted on Ameriroots website, dated feb 25, 1999.

    would you mind posting a link? or the full URL?

    thanks!

  • Edo,
    This is the statement by Senator Roberts.
    Cin

    Statement Taken From U.S. Senate Web Site February 25, 1999
    This section is taken verbatim from the official web site of Senator Roberts, except for editorial comments by Orville R. Weyrich, Jr. in square brackets of the form [ORWJr– ] and minor touch-ups to the HTML.

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 12, 1999

    Statement of Kansas Senator Pat Roberts on Articles of Impeachment Votes
    I today voted to sustain both articles of impeachment of President William J. Clinton. I so voted because I believe the President is guilty of obstructing justice and lying to a grand jury and because I believe these crimes are so serious they warrant his removal from office.

    This has been a difficult time for our nation. It has been a difficult time for me and for each Senator who was required to weigh the evidence and vote on the most important constitutional issue of our generation.

    I listened to 18 days of debate and testimony covering nearly 70 hours. I reviewed 14 hours of taped testimony by three witnesses and the President. I spent many more hours reading the voluminous record of the impeachment articles and meeting with my fellow Senators in order to reach a conclusion that was 1) fair, 2) met the constitutional mandates and 3) best served the nation.

    I did not seek that responsibility. I have, however, carried it out to the best of my ability.

    As a Senate juror, I was asked to weigh whether the House articles of impeachment charging the President with lying and with obstructing justice were likely true or false and, if true, whether the offenses rose to a level that requires the President be removed from office.

    I was especially impressed with testimony that misleading witnesses does indeed constitute obstruction of justice. I was equally swayed by the video testimony that painted a clear picture of a president willing to be untruthful and to encourage others to be untruthful in order to cover up abhorrent personal behavior.

    I believe that any open-minded individual hearing what I heard and applying the principles of Kansas common sense would arrive at the same conclusions.

    We in Kansas know that you don’t call witnesses in the middle of the night unless you want to sway them. The President did so.

    We in Kansas know that you don’t urge hiding legal evidence under the bed unless you want to affect the outcome of a legal proceeding. The President did so.

    We in Kansas know that you don’t hide behind the meaning of “is” when you are asked a direct question. The President did so.

    Do these actions rise to the level envisioned by our founding fathers in the Constitution as “high crimes and misdemeanors” so warranting removal from office? Our Constitution requires that the threshold for that judgement must be set by each Senator sitting as a juror.

    Again, I believe an open-minded individual applying Kansas common sense would reach the conclusion that I reached.

    In similar circumstances, 182 individuals were convicted and jailed in 1997 for perjury. That same year, 144 persons were convicted and jailed for obstruction of justice. The Senate has removed from office federal judges found guilty of perjury.

    Are we to have standards for the President different from standards applied to other citizens? Americans long ago rejected the imperial presidency. The President is not above the law. He is not a king.

    In arriving at the conclusion this President should be removed from office I weighed whether his actions damaged the national security of the United States. Again, I concluded that the President, by his actions, has severely damaged his ability to act as a leader in the community of world nations at a time when solid leadership is needed.

    This President has lost respect of our allies. His actions have emboldened our potential enemies, creating opportunities for them to act adversely to U.S. interests. Our foreign policy is adrift. The consequences to this generation and future generations are severe.

    I am convinced that this President has used foreign policy and the power of his office for his own purposes in an effort to divert attention from the legal and personal problems he created.

    Last February, as the President’s sordid affair surfaced, President Clinton threatened an attack on Iraq, complete with national town meetings and a cabinet road show.

    Last August, as Monica Lewinsky testified, President Clinton ordered a missile attack on targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan. There is increasing evidence his hand-picked target in the Sudan was a mistake.

    Last December, on the eve of the House impeachment vote, President Clinton ordered air strikes on Iraq. The result is murky at best, the reasons unclear.

    Each time the President has acted, charges of “wag the dog” have reverberated around the globe. Whether those charges are true or false is no longer material. What is material is that the President of the United States is not credible. He is not trusted. He cannot act in the best interest of America.

    He has lost the moral mantle of leadership.

    He has selfishly placed this nation in jeopardy.

    It is precisely this kind of situation, I am convinced, that worried America’s founding fathers as they devised the impeachment mechanism to remove a sitting president whose actions endangered the republic.

  • Good points here. Roberts was once very concerned about the grave danger to America because a president lied about extra-marital oral sex, but is unconcerned about another president lying America into unnecessary warfare by cherrypicking raw and vague intelligence. No, I don’t see any partisan blinders there, none at all….The question is when will Tim Russert and others stop sanctioning this man in national media.

    Thom Burns
    Exeter, NH

  • I think most people are just unwilling to believe anyone would really be willing to do what it seems to be that Republicans are more than willing to do every single day; say and do whatever it takes to keep themselves in power. Democrats have had their share of mistakes through the years, but throughout it all, they at least have appeared to have had the nation’s best interests at heart. I think people are beginning to realize that this administration does not. All one need do is read any bill it has passed since Mr. Bush took office in January, 01 to see that he is anything but a compassionate conservative, and the only uniting I have seen him do is uniting Democrats and others against him.

    I post somewhere almost every day reminding us all that until we can find a way to ensure transparency in the next election, all our handwringing and complaining about “them” will have been for naught. We simply must ensure we get rid of those evoting machines that leave no paper trail before the next election – and the only way to do that is by writing our representatives right NOW and urge them to do whatever necessary to ensure that is done in time. Remember, it’s who COUNTS the votes that counts.

  • I remain amazed that the country’s trust in our leadership remains so high. How can people NOT see how devious and deceptive this whole group is?I live in the south[not originally from the south] and am struck every day by the number of people who continue to believe GW is “just a good ole boy trying to do his job the best he can”. He and his ilk are unethical and possibly even criminal…yet these people swallow the words of Pat Roberts and his like as if they were honey, and go right on thinking that “its just a bunch of good ole boys”[ I have found that in the south , a good ole boy is anyone who would do anything for money…..then be in the front pew of the church every sunday]

  • Virtually the entire Congress should be flushed away, along with all of the turd blossoms in the White House. It’s time to take back this nation and erase all that has transpired since November, 2000. Unfortunately, we cannot bring back all of the lives murdered, butchered, maimed, by the sick psycho who sits in the Oval Office (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq). The sooner he is put into jail, along with his henchmen and henchwomen, the sooner we can go back to the “good old days” when politicians were simply crooks and liars, and didn’t threaten the freedoms of our nation and the world.

  • Just another Shrub suck-up. Why are so many people intimidated by this psycopathic coward??

  • “He who steals elections can appoint whoever one pleases.” Old Jungle Saying.

  • The key is the media. The only way to get through to the “brainwashed” people is for them to see the truth on TV or hear it on the radio. So many hear stuff on Fox (or Rush, O’Reilly, etc) and believe it. The media (forced by the People) brought down Nixon. All we have to do now is find a way to UN-brainwash the media!

  • Memory Serves (above) is absolutely correct. I also fear the Iran-Contra debacle will be repeated. This bunch learned well from the Bush 1 Administration and know how to make the rules work for them.

    Roberts is a scumbag, but he is throwing out a dangerous lure. Unfortunately, some Dems are following his bait all the way to the boat and thus, the frying pan. Allowing, much less requesting, hearings now falls right into their hands. The only result would be impeding Patrick Fitzgerald. We can’t afford to let the guilty once again walk away smirking while planning their next dirty deed at our country’s expense.

    • Comments are closed.