One revealing aspect of this story is that all of these USAs [ed.] were appointed by Bush, and now, no surprise, Bush supporters are going after them with a vengeance. (More cannibalism here.) Here's what Bushite Republican senator Orrin Hatch said about Carol Lam, who, again, was appointed by President Bush in 2002:
She's a former law professor; no prosecutorial experience; and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton. Full Quote from TPM.
Liar Hatch: Carol Lam blah blah blah.
Fact: Orrin hatch is a liar (okay, he could just be an idiot). First - go here (The Sideshow) Updated here:
Tuesday she checked with Carol Lam's people, who said that not only had she had nothing to do with the Clinton campaign, Hatch was also, um, misspeaking, when he said she was a former law professor with no prosecutorial experience - she had 15 years worth of experience, though she'd never been a law professor.
And here (top item) is a (cached) Associated press bio on Carol Lam:
NAME: Carol Chien-Hua Lam
BIRTH DATE-AGE: June 26, 1959; 47
EDUCATION: Yale University; Stanford Law School
CAREER: Assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, 1986-2000; San Diego Superior Court judge, 2000-02; U.S. attorney in San Diego, 2002-February 2007; legal counsel for San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., February 2007-present.
Did she throw a professorship in there somewhere? It's possible, but, according to above link, she did not. And she had, per that bio, 15 years of prosecutorial experience when she was appointed…by President Bush. Was she a Clinton campaign manager? The above link says no. And you've gotta think that an assistant U.S attorney might be disallowed from such a thing, and Carol Lam was just that during all the years of Clinton's presidency (and five years prior).
[UPDATE: Our liberal media still hasn't reported on Hatch's Lam-inating of the facts. I'll keep checking.]
[UPDATE II: Dang, I looked and looked last night but could not find where I'd seen the following Limbaugh link. It was FireDogLake. Yesterday their link to the Limbaugh transcript allowed you to see the whole show - but it's inaccessible now. Hmm. Sorry for the late acknowledgement, FDL.]
And Rush Limbaugh told the same lies about Lam the other day [yesterday, it turns out] on his radio show (cached Google - Limbaugh hides behind a subscription):
Carol Lam was a campaign manager! These people would normally be made ambassadors, but Clinton put her in as a US attorney.
"Clinton put her in as a U.S. attorney." No, Bush put her in as U.S. attorney.
Rush Limbaugh: Liar.
Fact: Rush Limbaugh is a liar.
A point that can not be made too often.
Back to the headline, The Logic of Over-the-Top Suspicion. When you've been lied too as many times as we have, it is illogical and irrational to think that anything that comes out of their mouths is the truth. They're lying. About anything important, anything especially regarding claims of innocence on a charge like this one. We would be irresponsible to think that they weren't lying at this point. We've been lied to too many times.
UPDATE III: Go here for the story of how these lies apparently came to be.
UPDATE IV: Oh my geehad just when you thought it couldn't get worse for Hatch - it can. And it has. Via TPM, Hatch has an explanation for his lies:
My comments about Carol Lam's record as a U.S. Attorney were accurate, but I misspoke when making the point of discussing politically connected U.S. Attorneys. I accidentally used her name, instead of her predecessor, Alan Bersin, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
As Josh Marshall said:
The simple fact is that Hatch's explanation makes no sense. He's saying: In the course of attacking Carol Lam I inadvertantly used Lam's name when describing facts that may or may not apply to, Alan Bersin, a guy Bill Clinton appointed to the same office back in the mid-1990s.
Does that make any sense at all? Of course not.
There's more over there.
UPDATE V: Rachel Maddow has the letter from Hatch saying I misspoke, but she still like totally sucks. What a man.
Still no word about Limbaugh's apology...
32 comments:
I imagine he was getting his stupid talking points "confused". Byron "the hair" York did a little better:
Byron writes: "the position of U.S. attorney for the Southern District had been wracked by politics in the previous decade. In 1993, Bill Clinton replaced the Republican U.S. attorney, a career prosecutor and veteran of 20 years in the Justice Department, with Alan Bersin, a law professor who had no prosecutorial experience but who had been a classmate of Clinton’s at Yale and head of the Clinton campaign in San Diego."
Yup. Sholdn't be surprising, but it is - that they can be so stupid.
York's is a little better, but still idiotic if you know the story.
.
I think Orin's worried how deep this might go.
AG-AG's Chief of Staff was once a good little LDSer working in Salt Lick City for...
... drum roll ...
Orin Hatch.
Hmmmmm?
.
Seems likely, doesn't it?
IANAL, (or a Senator) but since Lam testified under oath couldn't making demonstrably false disparaging remarks (perhaps in direct contradiction to something she testified to?) about a witness be considered obstruction of a Congressional investigation? Or perhaps the Senate has exempted itself from that law?
Your post references Lam as the "U.S. Attorney General based in Sand Diego."
The position is United States Attorney based in San Diego.
Wait, there's a rule or a law or something about this I read somewhere. Oh, yeah, here it is:
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Knew I'd seen that somewhere.
What I find so continuously flabbergasting is the sheep-like stupidity that so many Americans can still give credibility to anything the Bush Administration says.
I don't think I am so much smarter than anybody else. Yet, it is so obvious: BIG AND BOLD every day: another preposterous statement! And their toadies like Hatch can tell such breathtaking lies that even my pet dog cringes, puts her tail between her legs and wails.
And that there are still people who actually believe the things they say… does not say much for their basic intelligence.
I just have to repeat something I read in Paul Krugman’s recent column: Our fortunate moron son of a president who is currently the leader of 300 million-plus Americans actually uttered the following oxymoron : “…some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”
Orrin Hatch should be ashamed, as well as censored by the Senate as quite logically suggested by another poster.
hatch's staff does all the work for him and it appears they believe the bushit they hear on talk radio
pusilanimous prick
Thanks, anonymous. Fixed.
Ok, so she was a good and honest prosecutor. Maybe a little too good and too honest. Have you noticed her middle name? Looks Chinese to me. What if the whole Muslim thing gets stale and the chicken hawks go back to picking a fight with China? Can't have honorable and respected civil servants around with Chinese middle names, it muddles the dichotomy.
Her last name is Chinese too...
Yeah, but she went to Stanford! Doesn't that mean she's a liberal or something?
She went to Yale too. That's where, uh, George Bush went.
Yeah, but he didn't learn anything so you can't hold it against him.
I think Hatch had Lam confused with her predecesor, "Alan Bersin, a law professor who had no prosecutorial experience but who had been a classmate of Clinton’s at Yale and head of the Clinton campaign in San Diego." http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGIyNGU4MjdhYWIzNWE1ODNlMWQ3NzQwMzdiOGU3YmE=
Yeah, that was brough up in a post a DKos. The fact that he mixed it up says a couple thigs: that he wanted to find something to smear Iglesias (a Republican); and that he was so eager - him and his "people," that they didn't even bother checking the story out.
I attribute it to piss poor reading comprehension on someone's part. I've always thought that Hatch was relatively dimwitted,
Interestingly, there were two letters to the editor in the San Jose Mercury last Saturday claiming that the fired US Attorneys were Clinton appointees that Bush kindly let remain in office. (link, then scroll down to "Clinton Approach"). So this misconception seems to be gaining traction.
Good 'ole bumkin Orrin hatch. A man just dumb enough to get elected in Utah.
Due to a Constitution which never predicted Utah or the modern world, every state gets 2 Senators, even an armpit of a state, known for little besides Mormons, which takes in far more Federal taxes than it contributes, by a wide margin.
If Senators were proportional to population, Utah would get 0.83 Senators out of 100.
BTW, Stanford is noted for being a *conservative*, not a liberal university.
Thom - I've updated my Rachel Maddow post to include both your article and Hilzoy's post, so you might want to fix your link to The Sideshow to go directly to that post.
To "Anonymous" Mormon-basher:
It's pretty unfair and pathetic for you to equate "Mormon" with Orrin Hatch. You're outright assuming that he speaks and acts for all of us, which is entirely untrue.
And before you go referring to a "good 'ole bumkin" as electable in Utah, perhaps you should learn how to spell two of those three words. Makes you look like a bit of an ol' bumpkin yourself, Mr./Mrs. Better and Smarter than Armpit State.
For anyone who doesn't automatically hate Mormons, Utah IS known for more. Skiing, nature, Moab, Sundance, more. I worked at a hotel in Provo and lots of people from other states would frequently check in to see all sorts of things unrelated to Mormonism. Many had never even heard of Mormons.
And yeah, maybe Utah's population would garner 0.83 of a Senator. But we have a whole other house of Congress for proportional representation. There are other states that would have even less than 0.83 Senators -- some that currently have Senators as stupid as Hatch -- but for some reason, it's worse to you in Utah because there are so many Mormons.
Finally... Utah does have one Democratic congressman. I'm wiling to bet there are other states with all Republicans, but because they're not "Mormon states"... well, Utah gets to be the worst in your book. Grow up.
All this talk about secret testimony and being under oath brought up the notion that an oath is not necessary because it is a felony to lie to Congress.
Can they lie to themselves?
As someone from the state that elected, not once, but three times...Conrad Burns...
I can certainly say that there Hatch isn't the only stupid repuke out there.
And as a non-christianist pagan, I can also agree that Mormonism isn't the only dangerous religion out there.
omit, "there."
Absolutely, Buck Fush. At the risk of showing religious intolerance similar to the kind I denounced a couple posts above, I find the Falwells and Robertsons and others much more dangerous than Mormonism. Whatever influence the Mormon Church has on Utah politics, it is certainly not public. The church rarely comments on issues even related to politics, and it encourages its members simply to be politically active, no matter what party they might espouse.
The same can't really be said about some other Christian churches, no matter what you might think about the Mormon Church in particular.
Carol Lam should sue Limbaugh for slander unless he issues a retraction.
It's clearly false.
It's clearly defamatory.
It clearly shows reckless disregard for the truth.
Bersin is a Schwarzeneggar appointee, California Sec. of Education. He served as U.S. Attorney Southern District from 95-98.
Lam has written briefs on 'Roving Wiretaps', worked with the FBI on a sting of some SD Councilmembers, during which time the FBI had a wiretap on the subjects for three years. Her office took the case to the jury, they won, and the judge threw out the case. Later the prosecutions key witness admitted he was lying. (Lance Malone).
"Carol Lam should sue Limbaugh for slander unless he issues a retraction."
"Ditto" that.
"Slander?" For saying she was a law professor, a Clinton campaign manager, or she didn't have any prosecutorial experience?
Jokes aside - that isn't slander, is it? By legal defintion? Defamation?
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Things have been rather scatter-shot lately. Been running around analogous to the oft’ mentioned headless chicken. It doesn't help that the quality of "leadership" around these parts and other nether regions compel further numbing of undesirable neural impulses or forays into strange parallel realities in order to escape full soul deflation.The last couple of weeks have weighed in rather heavy on my despair to pleasure scale.Maximum distress is displayed for all to see when somebody upsets “the process”. It may explain the seemingly apparent stagnation of modern civilization at the hands of these dildos, when you consider the coincidence of giving every pinhead over eighteen the vote and the inability of humanity to take the next big step in humanist evolution. No, we’re much to busy worrying if the carpet matches the drapes, the molding is way too post-modern, and the light fixture might clash with the new spring fabrics as described in the latest issue of Pee-Hole magazine.All I can do is quote the great philosopher John Belushi, in one of his less than restrained moments: “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily!”. It’s Friday, and Sergeant Friday would say, “Smoke em if you got em!”.
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