Reading tea leaves? Nah, just reading t-shirts!

Imagine the scene: Big Mitch sitting on his couch, killing time and reading other people’s left wing blogs. There on one of the many blogs that many blogs link to, is an advert for a T-shirt with the slogan: Will someone please give the President a blowjob so he can be impeached?

It’s cute because it reminds us that this President hasn’t been impeached despite the fact that he lied us into a war, was grossly, yea, criminally negligent, in his protection of the homeland against hurricanes and terrorists, and in his prosecution of the war. He has contumaciously announced via ‘signing statements’ that he has no intention of obeying the law. His response to the discovery that he is engaging in wholesale violation of the FISA law, is to thumb his nose at Congress and say, in essence, I dare you to do anything about it.

On the other hand, Bill Clinton was impeached for having oral sex with an adult woman in the Oval Office. Spare me the protestations that the impeachment wasn’t about the sex but rather, it was about the lying. Clinton’s lies can’t hold a candle to Bush’s and, anyway, if you are cheating on your wife, lying about it is the least you can do.

And so it was, that Clinton almost went down, for having Monica Lewinsky go down and perform a sexual act that was famously portrayed on screen by Linda Lovelace, in a film called “Deep Throat.”

Speaking of Deep Throat and impeachment, you may recall an event called Watergate, in which we were shocked, shocked, to learn that a Republican president was a crook, his statements to the contrary notwithstanding. There was a leaker who made Woodword and Bernstein heroes, as they broke story after story about the mendacity of Nixon and his criminal crew. To keep secret this leaker’s identity, they gave him a code-name taken from the wildly popular porno flick: Deep Throat.

Until May 2005,[fn] the identity of Deep Throat was one of the favorite guessing games of the chattering classes. In April of 2003, a team of journalism students taught by William Gaines conducted a detailed review of source materials, leading them to conclude that Deep Throat was Fred F. Fielding.

Today, it was learned that the same Fred F. Fielding was appointed to replace Harriet Miers as White House counsel. You remember her: she was nominated by King George the Incompetent to be a Supreme Court Justice, and described by him as the best person for the job. Recently, she quit her job as White House counsel for no apparent reason. All Tony Snow could tell us was that she felt it was time to move on. (Having no family, she couldn’t claim the most clichéd of excuses for jumping ship.)

Could it be that she wasn’t the best person for the job of White House Counsel in these trying times? (I mean ‘trying’ as in, “The impeachment of the President begins in the House and is tried in the Senate.”)

Who is this fellow, Fred F. Fielding? He was the White House counsel for Ronald Wilson Reagan, who, as you no doubt recall, was President of the United States. It is one of the many things that Reagan himself could not recall in his final days, as he suffered from the affects of Alzheimer’s. However, even before the Alzheimer’s robbed him of his personality and dignity, his memory was none too great.

For instance, he couldn’t recall that he had authorized the actions that collectively became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Wikipedia summarizes Iran-Contra thus:

The Iran-Contra Affair (also called the Iran-Contra Matter and Iran-gate) was one of the largest political scandals in the United States during the 1980s. The affair is still shrouded with secrecy and it is very hard to discover the facts. It involved several members of the Reagan Administration who in 1986 helped sell arms to Iran, an avowed enemy, and used the proceeds to fund the Contras, an anti-communist guerrilla organization in Nicaragua.

After the arms sales were revealed in November 1986, President Ronald Reagan appeared on national television and denied that they had occurred. However, a week later, on November 13, he returned to the airwaves to affirm that weapons were indeed transferred to Iran. He denied that they were part of an exchange for hostages.

As it was explicitly against the law to fund the Contras, and you might expect that Ronald Reagan would be impeached.

Instead, they named the national airport after him, and talked about putting his image on Mount Rushmore or, at least, on a dime. He must have had a hell of a lawyer. That would be ole Triple-F.

So, if you are looking for a lawyer who could help you fend off impeachment, you need to do better than someone who is merely the most qualified person in the country to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. You need someone with experience.

And what we know so far, is you can get Fred F. Fielding, without getting any Deep Throat. Good thing, too: A blow-job can get you impeached.

“… and tell ’em Big Mitch sent ya!”

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[fn] W. Mark Felt admitted that he was Deep Throat in May of 2005.