Perj'ed

Wayne Uff at Bad Attitudes points to a DailyKos compilation of around a dozen GOP'ers hrummphing about perjury back when it meant putting all things Clinton down for the count...below, we see Senator Hutchinson's attention span has a statute of limitiations--I'm betting the same for the others.

And Uff points out something worth citing in it's entirety re: back in the day before the GOP discovered their collective inner prevaricators:

...while it is fun to play “gotcha” with the pro-perjury and pro-obstruction of justice statements by GOP senators from the Monica Lewinsky days, on a basic level it is a gross distortion to equate Bill Clinton’s half-truths and prevarications about his private sexual peccadilloes with the matters of state and abuse of power being investigated by Pat Fitzgerald. The Clinton investigation was never about an abuse of public power or the potentially illegal release of information that may have had national security or life-and death implications, whereas those things are at the heart of the exposure of a covert CIA agent. So while Clinton no doubt did perjure himself, it was fair to characterize his violations as purely technical, and in the end as entrapment by the prosecutor; here, that is not a fair characterization.

Remember, too, that Clinton’s initial lie came in a civil matter; it is exceedingly rare, but technically possible, to see a criminal investigation centering on untruthful civil testimony. However, prosecutions for false statements to criminal investigators are common, and properly so. Also, quite important when comparing the legitimacy of the two criminal investigations is the fact that the Clinton inquiry was headed up by a bone-deep political opponent of the president, while Fitzgerald is an appointee of the very president he is hounding.

And, since I've been winding my way down the thirty year old Watergate Memory Lane, I'll note in passing that the perjury rap on Clinton was definitely a case of political payback for one (already dead) Dick Nixon--the charge itself was merely the icing on the cake (Dick's impending impeachment was on the same charge and obstruction of justice).

Finally, recall that Team Shrub's smug assurances about "changing the tone" and "restoring dignity" upon arriving in Washington. I think we all know what that meant.

pe·tard: n. A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall.
"To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet...means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices."