Magna Carta, We Hardly Knew Ye...

Is it just me, or is anyone else frosted by Monica Gooding’s claim of her Fifth Amendment privilege—not that she claimed it, but the insolent, smarmy, in-your-face way that she claimed it? I quote from the letter sent to the committee by her counsel (posted in full here):

[T]he public record is clear that certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have already reached conclusions about the matter under investigstion and the veracity of testimony provided by the Department of Justice to date. … [T]he Committee’s Ranking Member, Senator Specter, has suggested that senator Schumer is using the hearings to promote his political party. … Senator Specter has publicly raised questions about the basic fairness of the Committee’s inquiry and lack of “objectivity.” … The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real.” … Where the Committee, its Chairman, and prominent members have already reached conclusions about the matter under investigation and the veracity of the Department’s testimony, and where the forum is politically charged and lacks fundamental fairness s questioned by the Ranking Member, and most importantly … we have advised Ms. Gooding (and she has decided) to invoke her Constitutional right not to answer any questions.”

Translated: our claim of the privilege is the sheerest fiction, a pure technicality without any basis in fact. But we won’t cooperate because we don’t like the court.

Well, of course not—who does? I must remember that the next time I get a traffic ticket: I don’t think I’m going to show up, because you might convict me.

I must say I think it is pretty rich for anyone in this lot to talk about “fairness” when they’ve spent the last six years trying to repeal Magna Carta. On the other hand, I suppose I should give her points for a kind of sincerity: if government is just an instrument of personal gain, why then it makes perfect sense to treat it with a kind of manipulative cynicism.

Fn.: I cheated. I edited some good stuff out of the quotes above. For example, the letter also said:

[I]t has come to our attention that a senior Department of Justice official has privately told Senator Schumer that he (the official) was not entirely candid in his report to the Committee, and that the official allegedly claimed that others, including our client, did not inform him of certain pertinent facts.

Translated: Oops. Maybe we have a good Fifth Amendment claim after all. Well, all right then.

Afterthought: Somehow, until just now I had overlooked this. Had I seen it before I drafted this note, I might have saved myself the bother. But my spleen does feel better.

Update: I'm watching Sen. Patrick Leahy with Tim Russert as he puts a somewhat different spin on this matter. He says he reads her as saying that she doesn't want to have to testify because "she might lie," i.e., in testimony in the future. Leahy, surely one of the most circumspect of Senators, rightly found this proposition absurd. FWIW, Sen. Orrin Hatch, in the same discussion, was as shrill and near to losing it as I've ever seen him.