Bush Gets Lawyered Up

I started off aiming to make a snarky post in response to Joshua Bolten's caution to the new Congress about engaging in political witch hunts - and there is snarky material in there, to be sure.

However, a little tidbit caught my eye at the end of that Reuters story. When Harriet Miers resigned earlier this month as White House Counsel, it didn't raise many eyebrows; her fawning gazes at Dubya have been an embarrassment to both her and the Bush Administration since her ill-fated flight toward the Supreme Court crashed and burned.

But what's interesting is who Bush has called in to replace her as the Libby trial winds up: Fred Fielding. Note that Freddy has been in some interesting places during some interesting times: Associate Counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal, Counsel to Reagan during the time of the Iran-Contra transactions. His involvement in Watergate was so deep that he was long speculated to be Deep Throat - being one of the very few people with access to all the requisite information about Nixon's crimes.

Of course we know now that Deep Throat was Mark Felt, not Fred Fielding. But then we also know that Fred Fielding knew everything Mark Felt knew, and probably more. And we know that Fielding remembers all of the things Reagan forgot about Iran-Contra. The Bush Administration knows these things about Fielding too: that he can be counted on not to squeal, no matter how much criminal activity his boss is trying to hide.

Bolten says a witch hunt in Washington would be neither productive nor well-received. I say where there's smoke there's fire, and it won't take much hunting to find a few witches - or more likely warlocks - in the dark halls of the West Wing. Fielding is there to keep them hidden. The question is, did he use up all nine lives keeping Reagan out of jail? Or does he have a few left to throw at Bush/Cheney's increasingly dire predicament?