So, Sandy Berger cops a plea. At least there will be no more of this nonsense about how this was “inadvertent.” However, his defenders (both literal, and in the ally sense) continue to use language to downplay what happened, just as they always did when caught with their hands in the cookie jar:

Lanny Breuer, Berger’s attorney, said in a statement: “Mr. Berger has cooperated fully with the Department of Justice and is pleased that a resolution appears very near. He accepts complete responsibility for his actions, and regrets the mistakes he made during his review of documents at the National Archives.”

Lanny Breuer.

Sigh. I thought we’d heard the last of names like that, but the Clinton administration is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Well, I guess I should be grateful that it’s at least in the active voice. Usually when one of the Clinton administration members did something like this, the phraseology was passive–“mistakes were made”–as though they just appeared out of the aether, unbidden.

But sorry, no. Forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning is a mistake. Turning on the wrong burner on the range is a mistake. Even getting distracted, and forgetting to put a document away and properly checking it back in is a mistake.

For someone with a high security clearance, one supposedly who has had extensive briefings in the proper handling of classified materials, taking documents classified at some of the highest possible levels, slipping them into your clothing, sneaking past the guards at the National Archives with them, taking them back to your office, and deliberately cutting them up in the dark of night with a pair of scissors isn’t a “mistake.” I don’t know if we yet know what it is, but mistake it wasn’t.

If this were a Republican campaign advisor and former Republican administration official destroying documents that reflected poorly on that same former Republican administration, we know that the outrage, from the Democrats and the Washington press corps, would be heard all the way out beyond the Beltway. The decibel level of the self-righteous howls would fell large trees all the way up to Bethesda. There would be cries of coverup, and demands for years of prison time (instead of a mere ten grand fine), and a permanent revocation of his security clearance (rather than the laughable three years) and for a deeper investigation of all of the other former Republican administration and campaign officials who were (obviously) involved, and for a full confession, Soviet style, with a statement of motive.

But he’s a Clinton administration official, part of “the most ethical administration in history,” and so he gets a slap on the wrist, and it probably won’t even be a topic of discussion on Sunday morning, let alone a heated one. After all, it’s an old story, and the election’s over, and he surely meant well, and isn’t it time for us to just bind up our national wounds and “move on”?

The late Mrs. Schiavo, and those evil Republican theocrats who were trying to thwart her “right to die,” will no doubt continue to be Topic A, not the fecklessness and duplicity of the administration that for eight years fiddled (and diddled) while Al Qaeda plotted, and then tried to destroy the evidence while blaming George Bush.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jim Geraghty is more pithy than me:

Do any Democrats want to confront the unpleasant truths of how the Clinton White House handled terrorism?

Because there were some facts out there that were so damning, Sandy Berger was willing to break the law to make sure the public never saw them.

[Update at 9:45 AM EST]

INDC Journal isn’t happy, either.

So, Sandy Berger cops a plea. At least there will be no more of this nonsense about how this was “inadvertent.” However, his defenders (both literal, and in the ally sense) continue to use language to downplay what happened, just as they always did when caught with their hands in the cookie jar:

Lanny Breuer, Berger’s attorney, said in a statement: “Mr. Berger has cooperated fully with the Department of Justice and is pleased that a resolution appears very near. He accepts complete responsibility for his actions, and regrets the mistakes he made during his review of documents at the National Archives.”

Lanny Breuer.

Sigh. I thought we’d heard the last of names like that, but the Clinton administration is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Well, I guess I should be grateful that it’s at least in the active voice. Usually when one of the Clinton administration members did something like this, the phraseology was passive–“mistakes were made”–as though they just appeared out of the aether, unbidden.

But sorry, no. Forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning is a mistake. Turning on the wrong burner on the range is a mistake. Even getting distracted, and forgetting to put a document away and properly checking it back in is a mistake.

For someone with a high security clearance, one supposedly who has had extensive briefings in the proper handling of classified materials, taking documents classified at some of the highest possible levels, slipping them into your clothing, sneaking past the guards at the National Archives with them, taking them back to your office, and deliberately cutting them up in the dark of night with a pair of scissors isn’t a “mistake.” I don’t know if we yet know what it is, but mistake it wasn’t.

If this were a Republican campaign advisor and former Republican administration official destroying documents that reflected poorly on that same former Republican administration, we know that the outrage, from the Democrats and the Washington press corps, would be heard all the way out beyond the Beltway. The decibel level of the self-righteous howls would fell large trees all the way up to Bethesda. There would be cries of coverup, and demands for years of prison time (instead of a mere ten grand fine), and a permanent revocation of his security clearance (rather than the laughable three years) and for a deeper investigation of all of the other former Republican administration and campaign officials who were (obviously) involved, and for a full confession, Soviet style, with a statement of motive.

But he’s a Clinton administration official, part of “the most ethical administration in history,” and so he gets a slap on the wrist, and it probably won’t even be a topic of discussion on Sunday morning, let alone a heated one. After all, it’s an old story, and the election’s over, and he surely meant well, and isn’t it time for us to just bind up our national wounds and “move on”?

The late Mrs. Schiavo, and those evil Republican theocrats who were trying to thwart her “right to die,” will no doubt continue to be Topic A, not the fecklessness and duplicity of the administration that for eight years fiddled (and diddled) while Al Qaeda plotted, and then tried to destroy the evidence while blaming George Bush.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jim Geraghty is more pithy than me:

Do any Democrats want to confront the unpleasant truths of how the Clinton White House handled terrorism?

Because there were some facts out there that were so damning, Sandy Berger was willing to break the law to make sure the public never saw them.

[Update at 9:45 AM EST]

INDC Journal isn’t happy, either.

The Democrats are apparently going to put up a fight against the nomination of John Bolton:

Although Democrats have challenged a number of diplomatic nominees, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “they see this nomination as more distasteful, and they’re more united,” said one Democratic Senate aide.

The split on the panel is one of several signs that the proceedings, set for April 7, could be acrimonious.

Advocates have organized letter and ad campaigns for and against Bolton. Democrats said they intended to investigate Bolton’s comments on a variety of issues, an exercise that Republicans said could stretch the hearing into a second day. Republicans said they were concerned that Democrats might attempt to filibuster the nomination if it reached the Senate floor.

Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control, is controversial because of his criticism of the United Nations and other international institutions and agreements.

“He’s been contemptuous of the U.N.,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) (D-Calif.). “There’s a lot to talk about at this hearing. It’s going to be very contentious.”

I think they’re misreading the mood of the public, and setting themselves up for an Ollie North moment, in which the witness makes fools of them. Bolton will have two messages: 1) the UN is very badly broken, and he will lay out all the evidence for that, from Darfur to Oil-for-Palaces to child sex rings among the “peacekeepers, with a Secretary General who is either incompetent, corrupt, or incompetently corrupt, and defiantly unwilling to step down; and 2) that his job is to reform it, not wreck it, something that cannot be done without a clear recognition of its many problems. In their own blind transnationalist love for the UN as they’d like to fantasize it, rather than as it is, the Donkeys are going to end up looking like defenders of the status quo, and I suspect that this will be quite obvious to anyone watching the hearings. This will not be a smart political move for them.

This is a little tasteless, but no more so than Howard Dean’s exquisite timing in choosing to recently call Republicans “brain dead.” Iowahawk has a list of vegetables that the federal government does think worthy of protection.

[Update at 1:50 PM EST]

Orson Scott Card asks “whose life is worth living?”

Peggy Noonan has a provocative piece today, in which she wonders why those who want Terri’s tube pulled are so adamant and emotional about it. I think that she goes a little too Godwin at the end:

Once you “know” that–that human life is not so special after all–then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.

As I’ve noted before, I have a different definition of a “human life” than many. I think that a human life is always worth living, but there can be a point at which life has been so altered as to no longer be recognizably human. I don’t know if Mrs. Schiavo has reached that point, but apparently many people implicitly believe that to be the case.

While I do think that there’s something to what Peggy says, I also think that she’s somewhat misdiagnosing the problem. Look at the usual suspects that she cites:

…why do those who argue for Mrs. Schiavo’s death employ language and imagery that is so violent and aggressive? The chairman of the Democratic National Committee calls Republicans “brain dead.” Michael Schiavo, the husband, calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay “a slithering snake.”

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo’s right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged. On Democratic Underground they crowed about having “kicked the sh– out of the fascists.” On Tuesday James Carville’s face was swept with a sneer so convulsive you could see his gums as he damned the Republicans trying to help Mrs. Schiavo. It would have seemed demonic if he weren’t a buffoon.

Why are they so committed to this woman’s death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

I don’t think that it’s so much love of death, as blind, raging hatred of the Republicans and conservatives who they perceive to be in the vanguard of keeping her alive. Like many other issues, they have become polarized and emotionally against something simply because those they perceive to be the enemy are for it. If the president’s Vision for Space Exploration ultimately fails, this will be one of the biggest reasons–because he, rather than the sainted John F. Kennedy (or even Bill Clinton) proposed it.

I don’t see this as a partisan issue, though it’s sadly become one. I’ve already said that I’m quite conflicted about this myself. The tragedy of this is that we simply don’t have enough information to know what is the right thing to do. And that’s the case for everyone involved, though they don’t want to admit it.

Wretchard has some interesting thoughts on what one might look like.

As he notes, the current organization is a corrupt relic of events of six decades past, and badly in need of a total restructuring. In its current form, it’s not just useless, it’s counterproductive to its stated ends.

Whatever my other opinions about the Terri Schiavo situation, or the facts of the matter, I can find no circumstances that justify starving and dehydrating her to death.

Either let her continue on in her present state, or mercifully and quickly kill her, but the present course is absolutely outrageous and unjustifiable on any ethical ground or circumstance, in my opinion. Even if the consensus medical opinion is that she’s insensible to it, there’s insufficient reason for it (in my opinion, none) to take the chance that she’s not.

I do find this aspect of the case a judicial travesty, beyond my comprehension, other than to maintain a legal fiction that she’s not being euthanized. Given all the outrage over how we’ve been treating prisoners, most of whom are trying to kill us, is that worth torturing an innocent human being to death over a matter of many days?

[Update at 6:30 PM EST]

When they remove (or reinstall, if that happens) the feeding tube, do they use either a local or general anaesthetic? If not, why not? Because they are operating on the assumption that she’s vegetative? That seems wrong as well.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

Here’s a link to a doctor blogger who is disputing the characterization that the “cortex has been replaced by spinal fluid,” based on the scans.

Amidst evidence that even the French people are revolting against the EU “constitution,” they are also recognizing that their naive attempt to repeal the laws of economics has utterly failed.

There’s an interesting article by John Fund in Opinion Journal today, about how the “grass-roots” cry for campaign finance reform was really astroturf bought and paid for by Pew:

Mr. Treglia admits that campaign-finance supporters had to try to hoodwink Congress because “they had lost legitimacy inside Washington because they didn’t have a constituency that would punish Congress if they didn’t vote for reform.”

If that constituency didn’t exist then, I’ll bet it’s even smaller now, with more people reading blogs. I hope that someone on the Hill reading this decides to introduce a bill that not only repeals McCain-Feingold, but also eliminates all of this donation-limit nonsense, and replaces it with a bill requiring nothing but full disclosure of any cash contributions from all sources, in whatever amount.

Thanks to site designer Bill Simon, I’ve got a new graphic up, over on the left, for anyone who wants to use it to link to the Online Coalition.