Extra Absorbant Depends - They Stop Leaks.

Someone needs to buy a whole lot of Depends diapers for adults for a whole lot of people in Washington DC.

No, they have not emptied out Century Village of Pembroke Pines (just how old are the people that live in a place called "Century Village"? Lets just say the residents personally knew Moses and Chuck Zink made commercials for the place. If you are 90 years old and you live there, your neighbors will complain about your loud music and wild parties lasting well into the night. They will remove their teeth, put them into the glass of water with the Efferdent and say to you "HEY YOU! Turn down that ragtime music! Don't you know it is 4:00 PM? Matlock is on the picture box!"

OOPS! I lost my focus again. This happens a lot. But you probably know this if you read this blog often. I sidetrack myself all the time. This post is NOT about Century Village on spinach boiled in prune juice night. Now there is a disturbing thought!

I remember The President once saying that he would fire anyone working for him that was found to have leaked classified information. Personally, I think this did not go far enough. People that leak classified information should face criminal charges - not just get fired. This is some serious stuff. If you think you can not refrain from talking about classified information, you should not read it. You should tell whoever else is in the room that you must excuse yourself, because you feel you might not be able to keep the info to yourself. Some people DO have issues with talking in their sleep for example. This does NOT make you a bad person, but it does make you a security risk.

But today, all over the news, the story is out. It seems that a former aide to the Vice President, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told prosecutors that The President himself authorized him to disclose the identity of a CIA agent to Robert Novack. Reports from the courtroom detail that according to Mr. Libby, Vice President Cheney told the super ethical "Scooter" Libby that his concerns about disclosing the identity of the CIA agent was OK because Bush had authorized it.

Now I have a few problems with this. The statement, as I heard it reported, made it seem like "Scooter" is an ethical giant. His super ethical brain could just not allow his ethical mouth to utter the unethical words that would disclose classified information to the press.

And if you believe "Scooter", I have some lovely swampland prime real estate in Florida for sale. Not that I do not believe that Bush could have authorized the leak of classified information as a form of political payback, what I do not buy is that Libby had any concerns AT ALL with leaking. He is in "cover your ass" mode and must think that if he is going down, he might was well use the people that caused his downfall to cushion his fall.

Then again, it could all be just a lie to cover his ass. It IS possible that the President did not authorize anything.

However, here is what we do know. Bush seems to like to issue executive orders to do al kinds of questionable things. One exampe are the secret jails. Another example is the violation of the FISA law. And so on. Authorizing the leaking of a CIA agents name to discredit someone with credible evidence that was contrary to Bush's case for war is not something it takes a great deal of grasping at conspiricy theories to believe.

But I have also heard an interesting twist to excuse the President from any possible wrongdoing. Get ready for this one - it is great.

The President CAN NOT leak classified information, because the President has the ability to de-classify anything. Now how about that? If the President tells you that you can talk about what is really in Area 51, you can do so. If the President says you can talk about top secret military projects, you can do it. As long as the President authorizes you to say something, ANYTHING, that information is instantly de-classified and is therefore OK to openly discuss.

The fallout of this will be fun to watch. The leader of the party that likes to claim that it is the only party to understand the importance of national security may be the same guy who is leaking classified information for political gain. And if this is true, then the claim that "we thought out intel on Iraq was correct" is pretty much exposed as a lie. All this stuff makes Watergate look like a simple Tupperware Party - and Watergate took down Nixon. I can not wait to hear the spin put on this one.