Standing By Your Sex-Hobbyist -Man; Because It's Your Fault Too?

SCOOTER THE KAPAROT

(and who's next?)

The saying, 'those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it' is one of the great truths of human existance. In this instance let me change that to:

Those who do not learn from Torah, are destined to learn its lessons over & over until it sinks through their thick, self-involved skulls!

The Torah is filled with violence, blood, death, sex and betrayal. It is also filled with redemption, unconditional love, self-sacrifice, altruism and belief in the face of odds we today can only imagine. But also, if we pay attention - the lessons of Torah are alive and well and walking the planet today. Different names perhaps but the same ethical dilemmas. Seems we've learned nothing.

In Job, Job rails against God for causing his suffering and making him into a scapegoat. This last couple months, White House scapegoat Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense team pointed a lot of fingers at who they considered the real culprit(s) to be:

Wells shot back that it was others at the White House and the State Department—and not just Rove—who were the real leakers. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, Wells asserted for the first time, had gotten immunity from prosecution and then confessed to the FBI that he had personally leaked Plame’s status to NBC White House reporter David Gregory. Dan Bartlett, now senior presidential counselor, also learned of Plame’s identify and spread the information as well, according to Wells. (And, of course, Wells emphasized, it was then-deputy secretary of state Armitage who set the whole case in motion by first disclosing Plame’s identity to columnist Robert Novak.)

But, Wells contended, it was Rove—the political strategist—who had to be protected at all costs. He was, Wells said, “the lifeblood of the Republican Party” and the man George W. Bush absolutely needed for the coming re-election campaign.
ORIGINAL

The Conservative Voice offers up this commentary, adding that Libby's Jewishness is at play in his becoming the White House's sacrifical lamb in the Valerie Plame affair:

In a perverse sense, it seems fitting that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been made a scapegoat.

After all, he is Jewish (and scapegoating Jews was not an innovation by Adolf Hitler or ended when Hitler committed suicide), he was not generally known until he was indicted, Webster's Dictionary 's primary definition of "scapegoat" is "a goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people after which he is sent into the wilderness in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur," and additional definitions include "one that bears the blame for others" and "one that is the object of irrational hostility."

It seems to me that Mr. Libby is not bearing any legitimate blame for either himself or others, but that his indictment has made him an "object of irrational hostility" (because it appears to me that he is not guilty of any crime and ultimately will not be convicted of one, even if he actually is guilty, because he will not be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt).

I am inclined to defend scapegoats and sacrificial lambs (including self-sacrificing ones like White House Counsel and former Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers), male or female, Christian or Jew, including:

Kenneth Starr, a Christian male who became the target of the Clintonistas because he learned that President Clinton somehow decided that the highest and best use of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was for oral sex and committing perjury and obstructing justice were permissible, at least for him, if they involved sex and telling the truth would be personally and politically embarrassing and would give additional credence to Paula Jones' charges against him and cost him money.

Harriet Miers, a Christian female who was targeted by the rule-or-right right because she had not joined The Federalist Society or made Judge Robert Bork's list of acceptable Supreme Court candidates. (And ticked off Ann Coulter big time, because she had gone to nearby SMU for both college and law school, instead of an Ivy League college and a top tier law school like Ann.)

And now Mr. Libby, a Jewish man whose reputation as a brilliant and experienced lawyer who went into government service to serve instead of to loot means to me that, about him, all who want the best of the best in government should give a hoot.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12

I haven't seen Libby, in any statement, cry that the indictment he received was an act of antisemitism? Granted what he did was very wrong and Jew or not - he needs to be punished. But to slyly spin it towards his Judaism? Come on Conservatives... you KNOW that's reaching. (As is a lot of suggestions that article makes) Almost as bad as saying Obama rhymes with Osama! Can we drop the elementary school epithets now, please?

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Now the political punditry wonders - perhaps Libby made a deal not to have Cheney and Rove called to testify in a trade for an uncoming presidential pardon. We'll have to wait and see on that one.

Dubya's under a lot of pressure these days, as White House Aides are being subpeonaed in the U.S. Attorney firings debacle, Bush considers it "partisan fishing." Perhaps another way to get some truth about the machinations of the White House machine that no one got from the Libby trial?

“There must be accountability,” countered subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez, D-Calif.

Again the computer age offers up some stunning evidence of the locker room bullying that is running rampant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But e-mails released earlier this month between the Justice Department and the White House contradicted that assertion and led to a public apology from Gonzales over the handling of the matter.

The e-mails showed that Rove, as early as Jan. 6, 2005, questioned whether the U.S. attorneys should all be replaced at the start of Bush’s second term, and to some degree worked with Miers and Sampson to get some prosecutors dismissed. ORIGINAL

As my Nana used to say: "Lord, preserve us all from our 'uncovered saints.'

AMEN.

Psalm 140
1 Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men;
protect me from men of violence,

2 who devise evil plans in their hearts
and stir up war every day.

3 They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's;
the poison of vipers is on their lips.

4 Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
protect me from men of violence
who plan to trip my feet.

5 Proud men have hidden a snare for me;
they have spread out the cords of their net
and have set traps for me along my path.

6 O LORD, I say to you, "You are my God."
Hear, O LORD, my cry for mercy.

7 O Sovereign LORD, my strong deliverer,
who shields my head in the day of battle-

8 do not grant the wicked their desires, O LORD;
do not let their plans succeed,
or they will become proud.

9 Let the heads of those who surround me
be covered with the trouble their lips have caused.

10 Let burning coals fall upon them;
may they be thrown into the fire,
into miry pits, never to rise.

11 Let slanderers not be established in the land;
may disaster hunt down men of violence.

12 I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor
and upholds the cause of the needy.

13 Surely the righteous will praise your name
and the upright will live before you.