Remember way back when, oh, many years ago, when I said that the “secret plan” of the Neo Cons was to not only create a permanent majority, but to corner all aspects of government?
There was the obvious — the White House and Congress — but they also set their sights on lobbyists, making sure that only Republican lobbyists had access; and the judicial system. Stacking the system with their judges, from the Supreme Court on down, is now beginning to reap benefits. We’ve already seen the sharp, rightward tilt from this years Supreme Court session, and I wonder — without impugning the name of this particular judge since I don’t know for a fact — if all those other appointees are doing the dirty business of the right:
A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Cheney and other top officials over the Bush administration’s disclosure of Plame’s name and covert status to the media.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said that Cheney and the others could not be held liable for the disclosures in the summer of 2003 in the midst of a White House effort to rebut criticism of the Iraq war by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The judge said that such efforts are a natural part of the officials’ job duties, and, thus, they are immune from liability. [The Washington Post]
Just a note: Judge John D. Bates was appointed to the U.S. District Court in December 2001… he was previously Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater Investigation… appointed by Rehnquist to a committee and by John Roberts to serve as a judge of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court…
I’m not saying that he is part of the Bush cabal, doing the bidding of the Neo Cons. I simply don’t have that kind of information nor the smarts to do that research. For all I know, he is a completely honorable man who adheres to the letter of the law.
But isn’t it interesting, those connections of his?
And that reasoning? Is he actually saying that disclosing classified information in an attempt to smear a critic is part of the official job and therefore the leaker is not liable? Wow.
