Republicans: Above the Law

The latest from Karl Rove’s attorney says it all:

Rove’s defense team asserts that President Bush’s deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said.

At the end of the day, it does not matter what Bill Frist really knew about the true standing of HCA when he sold the stock, it does not matter how many ethical violations and violations of Texas law Tom DeLay really committed, or in how many ways Karl Rove undermined the CIA – they are all Republicans. Forget all the hypocrisy from those former prosecutors in the Reagan DOJ who now make money pimping for the rightwing. All of their nonsense is true by definition. The Rule of Law party is above the law. Karl Rove must be innocent – regardless of the facts.

Update: Jeffrey Bell and William Kristol are worried about the criminalization of leading Republicans:

What do these four men have in common, other than their status as prosecutorial targets? Since 2001, they have been among the most prominent promoters of the conservative agenda of the Bush administration. For over four years, they have helped two strong conservatives, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, successfully advance an agenda for change in America. To the extent these four are sidelined, there is a real chance that the Bush-Cheney administration will become less successful … But it’s a reasonable bet that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives.

The four men are Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby. I guess Mr. Kristol does not consider such trivial matters as insider trading and the outing of CIA agents to be crimes.