why umbrellas?

Driving home from work yesterday it was raining pretty hard, but that didn't stop a few souls from running through the park anyway. Rain is actually a lot of fun to run through on a warm day. But there were two girls out walking who had brought umbrellas. Now, it's pouring outside; this is the remnant of hurricane Dennis. So if you're going for a stroll of any length of time, you are going to get soaked regardless. Plus, they were in jogging pants and shirts, not anything that would be harmed if it got wet anyway. So it really seemed an odd sight these two strolling through the park in the storm with their umbrellas.

(P) You know what else is odd? How easily the echo chamber on the right has transitioned from assaulting Clinton defenses to participating in hairsplitting games themselves. Are they seriously expecting the detail regarding whether or not Karl Rove specifically gave the name of Valerie Plame to reporters to matter? In a legal setting, it may, due to the extremely high burden placed on the prosecution in cases dealing with knowingly leaking classified information.

But that's the purview of the grand jury; we may never know those details. The primary point, as a few writers have been explaining, is how on Earth did Karl Rove, a political adviser, obtain classified information regarding, of all things, an undercover CIA agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction? How did that information get from the professionals to the politicians? Who initiated that process?

The second point is why has the Administration all of a sudden radically altered its public commentary on the issue? President Bush repeatedly emphasized he would not accept leaks and anyone involved would be fired. The Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, repeatedly offered specific denials that top White House officials were involved in any way. And yet, once it became public knowledge that Karl Rove had in fact been in communication with reporter(s) before Bob Novak cited his two anonymous sources, the Administration went into supersecret mode. All of a sudden they won't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation.

It makes you wonder if maybe this is a serious criminal investigation after all. It also makes it very hard not to be cynical. What other possible explanation besides a cover-up at the highest possible level explains the forceful, almost boisterous, manner in which denials were issued and leaks were disapproved of until incontrovertible proof became public? Now, reporters can't get a word out of the Press Secretary.

Finally, it makes you wonder what the people driving President Clinton's impeachment were whining about. His conduct with Monica Lewinsky/Paula Jones/Whitewater (it's hard to understand exactly how Special Prosecutor Ken Starr got all that power in the first place) never broke any laws, and it certainly didn't undermine national security. And in the legal language utilized under the original Paula Jones suit, blow jobs weren't sexual relations. The hairsplitting currently underway by the radical right's propaganda machine about whether Karl Rove actually used Ambassador Wilson's wife's name makes President Clinton's statement that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky seem downright reasonable.

Could it be, perhaps, that the propaganda machine undermining the Clinton presidency wasn't acting on principle at all, but rather in a cold, calculating manner designed to gain unlimited power? Nah, that couldn't be it. These people don't believe that a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier. They believe in freedom and democracy.