THERE IS NO SECOND PLACE

The Dems have a game plan "get somebody"

The more thing move on the more they stay the same.  The Dems have a game plan that they stick to know matter what.  The game is politics of personal destruction. 

           

                      Chuck Schumer's Media
By Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Sen. Charles Schumer is a legendary pursuer of television cameras. But look at the way the national media are covering Schumer's heavy-breathing pursuit to make Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cry uncle and resign. It makes you wonder just how hard Schumer has to work to get press attention. The media appear Schumer-owned and operated.

One interview really captures how the press acts more like a Democratic goon squad than nonpartisan observers of the national scene. On ABC's "Good Morning America," news anchor Christopher Cuomo, son of Mario Cuomo, asked this pushy question on July 27: "Is Alberto Gonzales out of a job at end of business today?"

   

       
                    
        In this video framegrab image taken from AP Television News, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks on the floor of Senate, Tuesday evening July 17, 2007 in Washington. Democrats pushed the Senate toward an attention-grabbing, all-night session Tuesday to dramatize opposition to the Iraq war, but conceded they were unlikely to gain the votes needed to advance troop withdrawal legislation blocked by Republicans. (AP Photo/AP Television News)

   

       

Related Media:

VIDEO:                 Leahy: Gonzales Must Correct Mistakes

VIDEO:                 Head of FBI Contradicts Gonzales Testimony

       

Cuomo wanted the attorney general whacked, and he wanted it now. He was asking the question to George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton lie-spinner. At least George bluntly explained the game: The Democrats' price for confirming a new attorney general would be "very, very high."

The Democrats are trying to set up a game of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, and most of the liberal media are playing along with them, refusing to cover the naked politics of it. If our political press were truly nonpartisan, they might be pushing Schumer back about his record: a partisan double-standard for truth-bending politicians and Cabinet officers, and a sudden hunger for a special prosecutor after years of opposing the same under a Democratic regime.

Start at the top. How many Senate Democrats voted to remove Bill Clinton from office for lying under oath in a sexual-harassment investigation? Did they favor special prosecutors then, or did they treat them like unelected tyrants? Charles Schumer, for example, had the unique historical distinction of voting against Clinton's impeachment in both houses of Congress -- first as a lame-duck House member in December 1998, then later as a freshman senator in 1999.

How many Democrats would suggest that Hillary Clinton should resign, or should have never run for office, for hiding Rose Law Firm documents from the special prosecutor in the Whitewater investigation for several years (until they were discovered near her private office in the White House quarters)? Special prosecutor Robert Ray found that Hillary Clinton provided factually false statements to the special prosecutor in the Travel Office case. Neither Rep. Schumer nor Sen. Schumer cared.

And no one in the "news" media cares, either.

This controversy is supposedly about the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys. So where was Chuck Schumer when the Clinton administration dismissed all 93 U.S. attorneys in 1993? Back then, it was perfectly fine. Now, he's outraged. No one in the "news" media cares about the hypocrisy.

How many Democrats suggested that Attorney General Janet Reno should resign after she took responsibility for the fiery deaths of cult members in the fiasco at Waco months after the incident? They didn't need to, as long as the national media were doing their bidding and hailing her as a hero. Time put her on the cover with the words, "Reno: The Real Thing," like she was as appealing as Coca-Cola, noting she was "cheered on both sides of the aisle in Congress." They dismissed her Republican predecessors in the office as "25 watt" dim bulbs by comparison. CNN called her a "rock star celebrity."

Journalists also cheered Reno when she lied to the family members of Elian Gonzales in order to conduct a surprise raid on their Florida home in the middle of the night to send the 6-year-old boy back to Fidel Castro. Tom Friedman of The New York Times raved on PBS about how she would be the toast of lawless towns: "What people in Bogota, Colombia, would give for five minutes of Janet Reno!"

Nine summers ago, Reno adamantly refused to name a special prosecutor in the Asian-foreign-contributions scandal, despite it being urged by her own appointed investigator, Charles LaBella -- a recommendation endorsed by FBI Director Louis Freeh. Neither Schumer nor the Schumer-sympathetic media found any reason to ask her to resign.

Chuck Schumer and Co. aren't really sticklers for honest testimony, but they are partisans seeking to win more Senate seats and the White House by any means necessary. They pose now as the avatars of accountability, after spending the Clinton years raging against prosecutors and congressional oversight probes. Sadly, you would never know that if you relied on TV news as the only source of your political information. They're doing the very same poses.

The Dems won't stop till they get Bush

 

 

 

 

 

The Dems practice the politics of personal destruction.  Rumsfeld, Libby, now Gonzales.

         

                A Scandal monomania
By Rich Lowry
Monday, July 30, 2007

A majority is a terrible thing to waste. That's not stopping congressional Democrats.

When not trying to force a pullout from Iraq, their main effort has been chasing Bush-administration scandals that loom large only in their fevered imaginations. Democrats consider this "change," but it is really a toxic repeat of the Republican investigative onslaught against Bill Clinton in the 1990s and of the Democratic one against Ronald Reagan in the 1980s -- in other words, business as usual when Congress confronts a hated presidential adversary.

   

       
                    
        U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, right, speaks to a roundtable of local Project Safe Childhood partners, including U.S. Attorney Rodger A. Heaton of the Central District of Illinois, left, at the U.S. Attorney?s office in Springfield Ill., Friday, July 27, 2007. Gonzales listened to Illinois local law enforcement on their increased efforts to combat sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Gonzales has been on the hot seat as Congress continues to try to get to the bottom of the firings of federal prosecutors.(AP Photo//The State Journal-Register,Justin L. Fowler)

   

       

Related Media:

VIDEO:                 Gonzales Aide Admits "Crossing The Line"

VIDEO:                 Leahy: Gonzales Must Correct Mistakes

VIDEO:                 Head of FBI Contradicts Gonzales Testimony

       

The Democrats' latest tactic is to give an implicit choice to Bush officials: They can either come to Capitol Hill to testify so Democrats can try to build a perjury case against them, or they can refuse, in which case Democrats will cite them for criminal contempt of Congress. Either path leads inexorably to Democratic calls for a special counsel. Democrats love the prospect of another couple of Patrick Fitzgeralds, drumming Bush officials out of public life with onerous legal bills for their trouble.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been a particular target, and why not? He's so incapable of defending himself that, for grandstanding Democrats, cuffing him around is risk-free fun, like cruel kids pulling the wings off insects. The new perjury accusation against him is based on testimony this past week in which he often was kept from saying two sentences in a row without being interrupted and called a liar.

He tried to say that the publicly disclosed National Security Agency surveillance activity referred to as a "terrorist surveillance program" was uncontroversial within the administration, but that other, still-classified NSA activities were contentious and led to a dramatic visit to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room in 2004 to try to get them re-authorized. Between the interruptions, the difficulty of discussing classified activities in public and Gonzales' expository shortcomings, it all got garbled, but a well-intentioned person could understand his point.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's Democrats preferred to pretend that they had witnessed a flagrantly perjurious performance. Gonzales is being tormented on another front, too -- the firings of U.S. attorneys. Democrats can't explain how the administration's firing of U.S. attorneys who serve at its pleasure could be criminal, but apparently want to spend the rest of the Bush presidency hunting for evidence of this elusive wrongdoing.

A House committee subpoenaed Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers to testify, predictably drawing a White House assertion of executive privilege. President Bush would be remiss if he didn't keep his aides from being forced to reveal deliberations about such a core executive function as hiring and firing executive-branch officials. Now the House is moving toward citing these high-level White House officials for criminal contempt of Congress, an unprecedented move.

And a futile one. It has been the policy of administrations of both parties that -- on grounds of separation of powers -- U.S. attorneys won't enforce criminal contempt of Congress for assertions of executive privilege. Democrats simply could take the dispute to court. Instead, they want the contempt citations and constitutional showdown. The more headlines about subpoenas, contempt of Congress, special counsels and all the other investigative detritus, they figure, the better.

This is a grave political miscalculation. Absent a Watergate-style smoking gun, or at least some plausible whiff of gunpowder, voters aren't interested in scandal monomania. The only political effect of the investigative onslaught is to please the bloodthirsty Democratic "netroots" who are desperate for excuses to try to impeach Bush, while convincing voters that Washington is a disgusting cockpit of partisan rancor oblivious to their true concerns. There is a reason President Bush can be at 28 percent approval and still double Congress' rating in some polls.

But Democrats can't help themselves. They've held more than 600 oversight hearings so far, and these hearings are close to their only accomplishment. The Democratic majority brings to mind a paraphrase of the old saw about teaching: Those who can, legislate. Those who can't, investigate.

The Politics of Personal Destruction

The Democrats present charges and remember it's the seriousness of the charges that count not the facts, and the press goes along as the willing lap dog. https://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1989/mw19890701stud.

When Attorney General Ed Meese resigned last year, he was found innocent of wrongdoing but the media still portrayed him as an example of what news accounts called the "ethical insensitivity" of the Republican administration. But less than a year later, when Speaker of the House Jim Wright resigned rather than face action by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, reporters assumed a new emphasis, growing concerned that an "ethics war" was damaging the political process. Meese was "the crown jewel of the sleaze factor;" Wright a "casualty of the ethics thunderstorm."

That's the double standard MediaWatch analysts documented by studying how the media covered Meese and Wright when each resigned from office. First, coverage of Meese's resignation focused on his personal ethics problems, while reports of Wright's resignation focused on the fate of the House in the midst of "mindless cannibalism." Second, the media used differing terminologies to report the controversies of Meese and Wright, focusing on the "sleaze factor" for Meese and "ethics war" for Wright. To measure these trends, analysts investigated print reports in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, and viewed broadcasts of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN PrimeNews and NBC Nightly News.

It's a curious thing, people get caught for doing something unethical or a  crime,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Wright  like Jim Wright,

Ethics investigation and resignation

Wright became the target of an inquiry by the House Ethics Committee. Their report in early 1989 implied that he had used bulk purchases of his vanity book Reflections of a Public Man to earn speaking fees in excess of the allowed maximum, and that his wife, Betty, was given a job and perks to avoid the limit on gifts. Faced with an increasing loss of effectiveness, he resigned as Speaker on May 31, 1989, effective upon the selection of a successor. On June 6th, the Democratic caucus brought his speakership to an end by selecting his replacement, and on June 30th he resigned from Congress.

The incident itself was controversial and was a part of the increasing partisan infighting that has plagued the Congress since then. The original charges were filed by Newt Gingrich in 1988, and their effect propelled Mr. Gingrich's own career advancement to Minority Whip and, seven years later, to the Speaker's chair itself. They may have originally been part of a response to Democratic efforts that had forced Edwin Meese's resignation as attorney general or the rejection of Senator John Tower's nomination as Secretary of Defense. 

or the Post Office Scandal http://www.heritage.org/Research/GovernmentReform/EM375.cfm which implicated Dan Rostenkowski    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rostenkowski   so they go out for the politics of personal distruction. 

The Democrates go after Newt Gingrich to get even, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich even thought the charges are all false.  Remember it's the seriousness of the charges not the facts.

In 1987, Gingrich brought ethics charges against Speaker of the House Jim Wright, a Democrat, who eventually resigned as a result of the Congressional ethics inquiry. Gingrich's success was in part responsible for his rising influence in the Republican caucus, and in 1989 he served as minority whip, succeeding Representative Dick Cheney, who had been appointed Secretary of Defense by President George H. W. Bush. Gingrich served as Minority Whip until the election of 1994, the first midterm election during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.

In 1994, Gingrich defined a Contract with America, a list of campaign promises signed by himself and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The promises were designed to unite the various factions of the party and provide a contrast with the policies of the Democratic Party. Many credit that contract (as well as demographic trends) for the election successes of November 1994. In that election, Republicans gained 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954.

Gingrich was then elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and served from 1995 to 1999. The Congress fulfilled Gingrich's Contract, voting on all ten of the Contract's issues within the first 100 days of the session. Legislation proposed by the 104th Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget law, as well as independent financial auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe shine concessions. While many of the major proposals did not become law, after defeat or modification in the Senate or President Clinton's veto, they represented a dramatic change in the legislative goals and priorities of previous Congresses and in general promoted Gingrich's conservative philosophy of limited government.

Over the next four years, Gingrich also took aim at the embattled president, investigating various scandals and calling for impeachment of President Clinton.

Democrats filed 84 ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich. All of them were found to be without merit. The last three were dropped on October 10, 1998.

During the investigation into the charge that Gingrich used tax-exempt foundations for political purposes, in which thousands of documents were turned over, a letter prepared and filed by his lawyer contained an inaccuracy. Gingrich personally accepted responsibility for the misstatement and agreed to reimburse the Ethics Committee for the cost of the investigation. He paid it from his personal funds.

The charge of using tax-exempt foundations for political purposes was dismissed, but it led the IRS to wrongfully revoke the tax exempt status of two groups that organized a college course, “Renewing American Civilization,” that Gingrich was teaching. However in April 2003, the IRS reversed itself and restored the tax exempt status of both foundations.

The Republicans expected big gains from the 1998 Congressional elections. When the party received the poorest results in 34 years for any party not in control of the White House, Gingrich received much of the blame for the showing. He announced that, although he would serve out the lame duck term in Congress, he would not take the Congressional seat to which he'd been re-elected and that he would not stand for the speakership in January.

The Democrats are in such disaray that the only thing they can do is go after the republican in a position of power and try and destroy him, Tom Delay.  The strategery seems to be the same Ronnie Earl gets a grand jury to indict and Tom Delays career is ruined even though the charges are probably false, and the press goes along as the willing lap dog. http://newsbusters.org/node/1581 

From Media Reseach Center home page

CBS Buries Earle's Partisanship in Story

The CBS Evening News buried the fact that Texas county prosecutor Ronnie Earle, who attained an indictment against Republican Rep. Tom DeLay, is a partisan Democrat -- the same CBS that labeled Ken Starr the "Republican" independent counsel. CNN's Jack Cafferty gleefully recounted his wisecrack from last week about whether DeLay had "been indicted yet." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann implied that Rush Limbaugh is a "rude, vile pig." Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post slammed his colleagues for not accurately reporting on the anti-war organizers ANSWER, which is a Marxist group supportive of Communist North Korea and Communist Cuba, as well as the "resistance," i.e., terrorists in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

They are going after Vice President Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby the same way.  http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050719/NEWS06/50719

Of course this article is written by the willing lap dogs putting the best spin on the story for the Democrates.

We have the Dempcrats on the run, in the arena of ideas, they can not compete.