FITZGERALD:  "I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge." 
.......

"But as important as it is for the grand jury to follow the rules and follow the safeguards to make sure information doesn't get out, it's equally important that the witnesses who come before a grand jury, especially the witnesses who come before a grand jury who may be under investigation, tell the complete truth. "

"This grand jury's term has expired by statute; it could not be extended. But it's in ordinary course to keep a grand jury open to consider other matters, and that's what we will be doing.
Let me then ask your next question: Well, why is this a leak investigation that doesn't result in a charge? I've been trying to think about how to explain this, so let me try. I know baseball analogies are the fad these days. Let me try something.
If you saw a baseball game and you saw a pitcher wind up and throw a fastball and hit a batter right smack in the head, and it really, really hurt them, you'd want to know why the pitcher did that. And you'd wonder whether or not the person just reared back and decided, "I've got bad blood with this batter. He hit two home runs off me. I'm just going to hit him in the head as hard as I can."
You also might wonder whether or not the pitcher just let go of the ball or his foot slipped, and he had no idea to throw the ball anywhere near the batter's head. And there's lots of shades of gray in between.
You might learn that you wanted to hit the batter in the back and it hit him in the head because he moved. You might want to throw it under his chin, but it ended up hitting him on the head.

FITZGERALD: And what you'd want to do is have as much information as you could. You'd want to know: What happened in the dugout? Was this guy complaining about the person he threw at? Did he talk to anyone else? What was he thinking? How does he react? All those things you'd want to know.
And then you'd make a decision as to whether this person should be banned from baseball, whether they should be suspended, whether you should do nothing at all and just say, "Hey, the person threw a bad pitch. Get over it."
In this case, it's a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn't to one person. It wasn't just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.
And as you sit back, you want to learn: Why was this information going out? Why were people taking this information about Valerie Wilson and giving it to reporters? Why did Mr. Libby say what he did? Why did he tell Judith Miller three times? Why did he tell the press secretary on Monday? Why did he tell Mr. Cooper? And was this something where he intended to cause whatever damage was caused?

FITZGERALD: Or did they intend to do something else and where are the shades of gray?
And what we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view.
As you sit here now, if you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it.
So what you were saying is the harm in an obstruction investigation is it prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make.
I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge.
This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime"

quote:

ORIGINAL: puella

A.  Clinton was brought up on impeachement charges.
True, But the dems voted in lockstep to save their guy, while admitting that he was guilty.

B.  Clinton got a blowjob, he did not out a CIA agent and cause the dissolution of years of undercover work regarding nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.  Nor did he put anyone in danger.

I see, we have to look deeper when prosecuting people. Not to see if they're guilty, just to see if the offense was commited by the right/ wrong side. You have to see if the people represent your ideology, first.

C. We are not discussing Clinton, and defunct history.  We are discussing current events.
It is a relevent analogy. This guy, scooter was convicted by the justice department, under a republican administration. He didnt get off, it wasn't swept under the rug. Should they go further, absolutely.
I just want to see it done the same way to both sides. Convict them all when you catch them.

"I will say there was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury. It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?' " Collins said. "I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy."

quote:

ORIGINAL: subohioboy

Ohh and Clinton should be in prison for perjury and obstruction of justice.  However, Republicans did not lobby those charges against him because it would look bad internationally.  Also, Republicans did not want to confuse voters.  They were smart enough to notice that the long solid democratic south could easily be had by using moral and religious issues.  Democrats are in some ways trying to copy but it is too late for that. 

Anyway back to the issue at hand. The GOP did not want to confuse the idiotic American public (which the founding fathers did not believe should even be able to vote for senators due to their very presumptuous and fickle nature) by using such legal abstracts as obstruction of justice and perjury.