DanA to TurdB: Yes, I Recognize Cheap Parsing When I See It
So Dan Abrams took none too kindly to being accused of constructing fables by the Walt Disney of the Conservative Movement. In a response that is about twice as long as the Turdblossom’s tome, Abrams provides quote after quote to demonstrate that he had done the work Rove accused him of shirking. Abrams repeatedly pointed to the parts of his interviews where he challenged Don Siegelman and Dana Jill Simpson. Most of all, I like where Abrams provided a set of questions designed to expose Rove’s cheap parsing for what it is.
1) You say you "certainly didn’t meet with anyone at the Justice Department or either of the two US attorneys in Alabama about investigating or indicting Siegelman." Did you talk to, or otherwise communicate with, any of them about it even if you did not meet? Did you have any discussions with any of them about this topic?
2) What about your old friend Bill Canary, whose wife initially led the prosecution? Are you denying that you spoke with him about anything related to the case?
3) You worked for former Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor. Did you ever talk to him about anything related to the Siegelman matter?
4) Did you ever ask anyone else to communicate with any official in the Justice Department about the Siegelman investigation or case?
5) Do you know why your lawyer told us that you would testify about this case if you were subpoenaed but now, after you have been invited to do so, he states that there are issues of executive privilege: "Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify … is not for me or my client to decide" he said.
6) You have said you never spoke with the White House about the case. If true, what is the possible "executive privilege?"
7) You ask why I did not further question one of my guests when he discussed your effort to help now Governor Riley in his campaign. Did you consult in any way with Riley or anyone else working with him on the campaign?
8) Did you ever discuss, with anyone, the possibility of media leaks about the Siegelman case? Did you speak with any members of the media about Siegelman during his campaign? [my emphasis]
I’m actually having quite a bit of fun watching these two exchange their letters–I hope it lasts until football season, when there’ll finally be something worth watching on the telly again. (I was always a big sucker for epistolary novels.)
Until Turdblossom crafts his next monument to cheap parsing, though, I think it wise to start keeping track of how many times Karl has been invited to give his side of the story on Don Siegelman–yet continued to parse cheaply.
- 60 Minutes contacted Rove–who denied through Luskin Simpson’s allegations
- 60 Minutes contacted Rove for the follow-up–Rove said he never talked to DOJ about Siegelman, nor anyone at the White House about him
- Rove spoke to GQ–complaining in much the same way he did about Abrams
- Abrams says he "repeatedly" invited Rove to appear on his program
- Abrams invited Rove, through Luskin, after Siegelman left prison (Luskin said "sure," Rove would testify)
- John Conyers invited Rove to testify before HJC (Luskin backed off his earlier claim, explaining Rove might be prevented from testifying by executive privilege)
- With this letter, Abrams invited Rove once more to appear and answer questions
Two offers from 60 Minutes, "repeated" invitations from Abrams, and one from Conyers. Yet Rove still won’t appear before a antagonistic interviewer.
As Abrams says, the ball is, and has been, in Rove’s court.
Your letter poses questions that you believe I should have asked as part of our coverage, but many of the most significant ones only you can answer. I address your specific critique below, but I begin by wondering, based on many of your questions, whether you actually saw, or reviewed, all of our coverage. Or perhaps, as you put it, "you don’t want the facts to get in the way of a good fable."
You accuse me of "diminishing the search for facts and evidence," yet thus far you have refused to answer any questions under oath or even from me that would aid in that very search.
I wonder whether Rove played these same games with Patrick Fitzgerald? Now that would be an epistolary novel worth reading. Just imagine if Rove refused to show up eight times before finally agrreing to each of the five appearances he had before Fitzgerald and the grand jury? That’d be 40 chapters long–just with Rove’s fanciful replies.
Spiffy shades!
If Rove need to be asked several times for each appearance, I’d think that turning those requests and his answers into a novel would be a good source of funding for the next administration.
It’s too bad serial publication, as it was done in the 19th century, is out of style. You could probably get a couple of years worth of installments out of this.
You do know a significant part of my diss research involved serial publications? I got to read–and teach–the Count of Monte Cristo. Not bad for a day job. (Lots of epistolary elements to true serial novels.)
Just in passing, serial publication is coming back as novels presented as podcasts you subscribe to. I could see the letters being read with commentary — something much like this post — and being put out there as a sequence of MP3 files. It’s all kinda DIY at the moment, but a few hundred projects are available. Does an end run around agents and publishers.
Bleak House: Our American Cousins
It could run in The Guardian.
Sigh….
This is hideous:
Oh great, it stripped out the html.
angle bracket img src=’http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif’ alt=’8)’ class=’wp-smiley’ /angle bracket
EW, I wasn’t sure about that, but I was sure that you’d know about the publication method.
‘Chapter One – In Which Karl Receives a Letter from Mr Fitzgerald’?
Merriam Webster:
I think Fitz had a way to get Mr. Rove to appear before the GJ:
“Mr. Rove, do you have anything to say to the Grand Jury before they indict you?”
That trick worked what– 5 times?
Bob in HI
The questions Dan posed are interesting, but I wouldn’t expect answers from Rove.
There is absolutely no one to pursue Rove except bloggers and they aren’t law enforcement. But hell, if you refer to the FBI and their supervising attorneys at DOJ as well as those on the FBI staff, as law enforcement, when it comes to Rove, and many other matters, they aren’t law enforcement either.
Cheney’s assertion aside, there are theoretically 3 branches of government. Mukasey was installed to do the Sylvio Dante number on one–that’d be the Executive; the Legislative is going to pursue Rove about as fast as Conyers paints the surface of all two and four lane roads in Michigan with speckled paint by hand. That leaves the Judiciary which was played as a tool by Rove, Leura Garrett Canary, USA for the Middle District of Alabama, the heroine in of the remarkable recusal story her husband Wild Bill Canary, Alice Martin, USA for the Northern District of Alabama, Louis Franklin, acting AUSA in the Nothern District of Alabama, and the 4 Judges that participated in the Siegelman case.
Wonder if a HJC subpoena is really in Turdblossom’s future?
Not that he’d ever show up. And not that it would ever be enforced by the DOJ.
HJC or SJC subpoenas don’t mean jack to any member of the current administration who blow them off as you well know. And now that Fitz is off his back and Mukasey is ensconsed as the Soprano at DOJ, Rove don’t sweat shit nor does anyone else in the administration.
I know that people can only guess at this, but how explicit and particular do people think Mukasey had to be in his pre-nomination chats with whomever vetted him about what he would and would not do if confirmed as AG? Did he have to agree to anything as crude as “I will not touch a hair on Karl Rove’s head,” eg, or was his firm commitment to basic principles like executive primacy enough? I don’t know how these guys sound in private — the vulgarians at the top I can imagine, but a guy like Mukasey, no.
I just love point #6: “6) You have said you never spoke with the White House about the case. If true, what is the possible ‘executive privilege?’
Oops…
There isn’t one of course, but if they get around to a second Rove subpoena on this matter, he’ll simply refuse to show.
It’s the Doctrine of “So………” as butressed by USC and a progeny of case law.
You have to wonder, why exactly would Rover get in a written pissing match with a lawyer (even an inexperienced non-practicing one) with a national teevee show; especially one who’s father is freaking Floyd Abrams? If Rove was my client, I would dump him for terminal stupidity. But then again, major drug dealers, priests, child molesters, armed robbers, homicidal folks etc. are one thing; but I have some moral lines I just couldn’t cross, so I would never accept Rove as a client. Well maybe for a million dollars…..
Presumably, that’s what Luskin will have made off of Rove by the time he’s done.
Plus, Luskin seems like a pretty confident guy. He pulled off a near miracle preventing Rove from getting indicted by Fitz. SO I presume he now thinks he’s got some kind of lucky charm that will continue to keep his law-breaking client out of legal trouble.
I wonder whether LUskin, who is a Democrat, is voting for a Democrat for President, given that it will make it much harder to keep ROve out of the pokie?
If you haven’t heard Robert Kennedy’s 30 minute interview with Don Siegelman from Saturday, I highly recommend checking it out:
http://www.goleft.tv/interface…..wf?id=1267
– Tom
bmaz, there is a new development in the ongoing clusterfuck that is the Tommy K case. TPM is saying that he pled guilty to money laundering over a year ago
He did; that is the case we have been talking about for over a year now. The new development is really almost collateral to the actual case and involves how much of his cooperation agreements with the Feds will remain sealed and out of public knowledge. We have been discussing this in the comments over on the Pissing Condi thread.
We knew that. What we didn’t know is the theory the govt used to prevent his transcripts from being public.
Maybe Brent Wilkes can commiserate with the Colorado realtor who found this gem in her brain:
If she hadn’t a told us, we’d a never knowed. Actually, that could make one go “Hmmmm.”
the problem is his piece preaches to then quire, the only people that will read it are those that already know it’s true
abrams misses his oportunity by being too kind, too professional, too intelectual and the piece will never make it to the ears of those that read rove word for word
what abrams needed to do is start straight out calling rove a liar
“rove makes claims he knows as a fact are false hoping to dismiss the events as they occured with lies, none of his claims are true and he knows it however I will enumerate each and every false claim below, unlike those false claims of a man trying to fool the public yet again, my claims are documented”
there
then he can go on with his peace but his method will turn off the marionettes rove addresses before they get past the first paragraph
the democrats need to crash the gate, they need to learn how to speak in terms the base has to pay attention
Great idea perris, but it is tough to crash the gate when conservative, Republican leaning owners and editors control the very access to the gate.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.- Upton Sinclair
I’ve long believed that any question posed to any member of this administration must cover all bases:
Don’t ask, “Did you ever tell someone that ….?”
Don’t ask, “Did you ever meet with ….?”
Instead, thanks to technology and to word-parsing, the correct wording to most any question would include a form of the word “communicate.”
Even then, the rest of the sentence must be meticulously approached: “Did you communicate in any way or method information related to …?”
Then, when the answer is “yes,” the specifics can be tackled.
So far, Karl Rove and Crew have been able to avoid any follow-ups because they pars-ingly dodge the initial question.
It’s like reading Heloise and Abelard — without the unrequited love.
We can only hope that Abrams has tweaked the narcissist in Rove firmly enough to generate an angry and lengthy retort.
Great post. Go Abrams!
This reminds me. I have to find my sister a copy of the novel Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. My sister is due to to deliver her baby in October. With 1500+ pages in length (paperback edition), Clarissa will give my sister something to read no matter how endless her labor. And the chapters are short, so she can make progress between contractions. (It will also teach her a lesson for teasing me endlessly for buying that novel years ago and never getting around to reading it).
It’ll be interesting to watch Rove squirm and parse ever more weakly as his direct influence in Washington diminishes. He retains bases in several states, Texas and Alabama most prominent among them, and he has several CongressCritters
on his payrollin his client base, but he will face an antagonist White House, relieved and uncooperative bureaucracy and growingly other-focused Congress. Only the Villagers and those sponsoring their increasingly costly Wingnut Welfare will remain on his side, as they continue to marvel at his prescience and fraud.Karl will have to turn his attention to building new clients – corporations among them? – while fending off repeated inquiries and, let’s hope, finally a proper DOJ investigation. That might distract even the famously focused Karl enough to let sunlight shine through into his coffin.
I do rather like Dan Abrams point 6. Rove is throwing up a fraternity toilet full of defenses and distractions, hoping a few stick. If he’s ever hauled into court, we may finally learn that Karl’s skills are limited to PR and dirty tricks and that his lies, contradictions and half-truths are built on a foundation of cynicism and deception.
If so, the Villagers will rend their garments and sit shiva, and yet the earth will be bountiful. In a less peaceful analogy, it would be like stopping a pirate curse and allowing peaceful commerce to return to our shores and the hallways of government. At least until the next Karl Klone comes along, which is one reason the Constitution is built around that pesky idea of the separation of powers.
Wonder how that increased “family time” is workin’ out for Mr. Rove, his wife and their college-attending son.
It was almost as if Rove spilled his entrails onto fancy stationary and mailed them off to Dan Abrams.
Then Abrams, like some ancient Oracle Reader, looked at them and went, “Interresting… verrry interrresting… we have FearOfTestifyingUnderOath, we have AttemptedDeflectionByInsult, we have AttemptedSmearByImplication…”
Pat @22 hit a bulls-eye, IMHO.
Karl has been able to remain in the parse-created world of illusion and innuendo because people didn’t parse their questions finely enough; so he saw infintestimally small gaps, as Pat points out, and then he squirmed through one tiny gap after another (the way a rat can squeeze through a hole size of a dime).
Abrams seems to have watched earlier press errors, and he’s bringing his legal training to the reporting sphere. That seems to be scaring the entrails out of Rove.
Which is, evidently, how Abrams got such a good look at them.
Game on.
Thanks for the kind words — I thought the same thing back when Alberto Gonzales was testifying; he repeatedly answered, “I do not recall.”
Not “I cannot recall,” which speaks to ability, but
“I do not recall,” which addresses only what he is doing at the moment.
Made me crazy then; makes me crazy knowing they probably offer Regent-Exchange classes in this technique.
Actually, they put Gonzales through days, if not weeks, of training before he started appearing before Congress.
Yeah, and look how well that special training worked out ;-))
[wickedly]
Here’s hoping Karl takes a few tutorials at that same training program… [/wickedly]
—
OT – whiny, self-indulgent, self-pity follows…
Wow, I haven’t even had time to read the next thread…! Soooo many comments 8-0
It’s lovely that EW is all famous and everything now, but the charming, quiet old days at TNH, when I could keep up most days were a wonderful luxury.
And yes, this lament is completely selfish; I’m no saint, and I’m quite fond of my EW addiction…. It’s nice she has so many readers, but yikies, it’s not possible for this ‘old timer’ to keep up (!)
perris–”
Re “preaching to the quire.” Amazingly, “quire” is actually a word, so an erudite spell-check program would have let it pass. But it ha to do with folded paper…. Or is this some new denomination?