Perjury: It's a Good Thing
Poor Kay Bailey Hutchison. She owes her entire political life to the Bushies, and here they are using her as a great airy test balloon emblazoned with the lamest response to the CIA leak investigation yet: That perjury isn'treallya crime. That excuse sounded disingenuous when people were lying about blow jobs, it sounds positively unhinged when people are lying about national security issues. But Kay has a crafty rhetorical maneuver up her St. John's knit sleeve: She tries to create sympathy for the beleaguered White House by comparing them to... Martha Stewart. "Look at Martha Stewart, for instance, " she said on Meet the Press, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime." Of course. Martha Stewart may seem an odd symbol of unjust imprisonment -- but, hell, if Judy Miller can be a First Amendment martyr...