It's not a game

As I was wandering down to buy eggs this morning I heard Susan Estrich, a USC law professor, explaining why she was the only consistent liberal in denouncing both the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the investigation of Karl Rove (I assume the interview was before teh indictments) for lying.

Her argument is that the court should never pursue someone for lying. While I understand her position, I don't think that's really what she is saying. After listening to her I think she dislays a world view that many (not all) lawyers share. It's all a game. Specifically, she described the outing of Valerie Plame as "hardball". I understand this view; to her perjury or giving false statement is akin to a technical foul in basketball and a player shouldn't be banned for life for it.

While I'll give her credit for being consistent since this was alos her logic during the impeachment trial, I don't see how she is any different from the Karl Rove republicans. The end justifies the means.

I do take issue with her claim that she's the only consistent one. I objected to the Clinton impeachment because, while he lied, he lied about a something that was irrelevent to his job as president and was asked in the context of a fishing expidition. In otherwords, he didn't lie about something that was against the law.

Karl Rove did. He lied to cover up an illegal act. In these cases people lie because the penalty for lying is still less severe than the penalty for the crime. In otehrwards, if Karl Rove had told the truth I would expect to see him in jail.

That to me is extremely consistent. It matters whether the lie was an attempt to conceal a crime vs. public humiliation.

It also bothers me that so many lawyers on either side of the aisle do look at it as a game. The outing of Valerie Plame isn't about winning and losing. Real people's live were put at risk, people's careers jeopordized, and our national security compromised so that an opponent of the Bush administration could be intimidated. These are real consequences and I wonder if Susan Estrich's family was murdered to intimidate her if she would take the same view that it was just "hard ball politics".

And before anyone says that's not a fair analogy it absolutely is. Which is the cognitive disonance so many people have abotu this: peoples lives were put at risk. That's an absolute fact. Rove, Libby, Cheney et al either didn't care about it or don't care enough to understand that.