October 25, 2005 - A decade ago the Republican’s in Congress were in full hue and cry.  The President, they shouted, abused his office by obstructing justice and lying to cover up his peccadillo with Monica Lewinsky.  Those are high crimes and misdemeanors they said and Bill Clinton must be impeached.  To every thing (spin spin spin) there is a season (spin spin spin) and a time to every purpose under heaven.  A time to impeach and a time to indict and, if Kay Bailey Hutchinson is to be believed, a time to leave off indicting.

Senator Hutchinson is out in front of the Republican Dervishes spinning with all her might.  If indictments come, she says, let them be for “a crime and not some perjury technicality where they could not indict on the crime.”  Senator Bailey clearly feels that this is a time to leave off indicting, It was not such a time in 1999 when she said, “The edifice of American jurisprudence rests on the foundation of the due process of law. The mortar in that foundation is the oath. Those who seek to obstruct justice weaken that foundation, and those who violate the oath would tear the whole structure down.” That was a time to impeach for the Senator. 

The clock is marking the closing hours of the Grand Jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA agent’s identity.  Scooter Libby and Karl Rove seem to be staring down the barrel of indictment.  The New York Times is reporting that Libby first learned of  Mrs. Wilson’s role as a covert Agency operative weeks before he made the series of phone calls to his friends in the media.  That information, if true, put the lie to the Vice President’s public claims that he only learned of Wilson’s mission and the role of Mrs. Wilson in suggesting him for the mission when he read it in the newspapers.  Vice President Cheney did testify under oath but we don’t know if he was posed questions as to when he acquired that knowledge.  If he was asked and he answered under oath as he has in public then the Republicans have a dilemma – either Scooter is guilty of a “perjury technicality” or the Vice President is.

The Whitehouse seems to be resigned to the indictment of one or more top White House aides.  They are developing strategies and contingency plans.  But most of akk they are getting ready to Spin, Spin, Spin.