Scooter

I posted this yesterday at Just One Minute:

Damn.

The appeal will be interesting legally but a nullity politically.

Unfortunately, getting a jury - any jury - to understand the burden on the prosecution in a criminal matter is very difficult. It appears, as one commentor notes above, that this particular jury, faced with a rather unconvincing prosecution, rolled up its collective sleeves and got to work doing the prosecution’s job for it.

It is also unhelpful to have a judge intent on preventing a full defense and declining, time after time, to grant the defense the customary latitude to bring in evidence going to context. Some of those rulings likely contain errors of law; but the overall effect of Judge Walton’s cheese paring was to deny Libby the right to present critical facts to the jury. Ms. Mitchell being one of them, Ms. Plame’s still murky status being another. By denying Libby the opportunity to bring in such evidence Walton ignored the spirit of the law which entitles an accused to mount a full defense.

I’m not terrifically impressed with Well’s decision to go for simple and streamlined because nothing about this case was simple. Pushing the judge a lot harder and calling more witnesses who would speak to the sheer incompetence of the overall investigation would have made sense. So would calling the multiple other sources of the Plame pushback within the administration. This might not have done the administration much good but Wells was acting for Libby not George Bush.

Finally, for our Fitzmas friends: when you were expecting a bike under the tree and you get socks you still have to smile. Because that’s all you’re getting

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Written by jay on March 7th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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Soot! The Bastards!

Soot from the factories of Asia is changing weather across the Pacific Ocean and causing storms like the December howler that clobbered Vancouver’s Stanley Park, a new study says.

For a change, scientists aren’t blaming global warming for the increase in number and intensity of storms. The new study blames sooty, sulphurous coal smoke from Asian industry — largely in China and India — for altering the eastbound “storm track” in the Pacific. vancouver sun via sda

I keep saying that the solution is to buy nothing from China….as if.

I’m hoping to find a market to trade soot offsets. So far, no luck. Apparently algore has not heard about soot. And, by the way, there is some evidence that changing ice conditions in the Arctic, if these changes are happening at all, may well be attributable to soot as well. Makes the ice darker and thus more heat absorbent.

However, I remain content to blame George Bush.

Written by jay on March 7th, 2007 with no comments.
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