« previous | MUCK HOME | next »
Rove's Lawyer: SIKE!!!
Oh, man, the House Judiciary Committee must be feeling pretty stupid right now.
Yesterday, the committee followed up on a comment that Karl Rove's lawyer had made to MSNBC, that Rove would welcome the chance to testify to Congress about his role (or lack of one, he says) in siccing Justice Department prosecutors on Don Siegelman.
But it turns out, not so much (sub. req.):
[I]n an interview with Roll Call, [Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin] said that his MSNBC comments were taken out of context."Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify ... is not for me or my client to decide," but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and Congress over executive privilege issues, Luskin said.
That ongoing negotiation, you might remember, is not going so well, since the House has gone to court in an attempt to enforce subpoenas issued last year as part of the U.S. attorney firings probe.
Note: For readers objecting to our spelling of sike, I refer you to the discussion in the comments section to an earlier post.
Josh
Zachary
Bad link to SIKE discussion.
April 18, 2008 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is working for me.
April 18, 2008 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rove has an unblemished record of breaking the law ang getting away with it. It makes me bitter.
April 18, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who knew that the president could prevent a private citizen other than his attorney from testifying about unclassified material? Maybe he'll do it by hauling him off as an enemy combatant and imprisoning him at Cozumel.
April 18, 2008 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I fully expected Rove to avoid testifying at all costs, I must give props to Rove's lawyer for the "my comments were taken out of context dodge." It's a classic feint. Keeps your opponent guessing. This strings the whole process out at least another month without doing a damn thing and brings Rove one month closer to pardon time.
-AF
Andrew Sullivan Is A Fraud
April 18, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
You really think that Bush would have the guts to pardon Rove also? Oh well, now that I typed the question I can answer it myself. And this bunch of
Republicans complained about the Clinton pardons? Remember, Bush did not even pardon a very ill woman in Texas prisons who had only months to live and who desired to see her aged mom and kids. Go figure a guy who does that but pardons his hot shot staff who participated in treason.
April 23, 2008 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Several issues really, really bug me about this...
How is it possible that illegal behavior is privileged?
Are private acts of White House Employees not involving official duties covered by Executive Privilege?
Does this assertion of Executive Privilege constitute an admission that the directives to prosecute Don Siegelman came out of the White House?
April 18, 2008 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've read the previous discussion as to why you should go ahead with your moronic idea to spell psych "sike," and your justifications seem to be that (1) you grew up with ignorant and stupid people, so you should never again have to spell anything correctly, and (2) it's a magical word that exists in a realm of made-upness and therefore it need not be spelled correctly because there cannot be a correct spelling for such magical words.
Spelling psych "sike" is sickeningly, stomach-churningly stupid. At least those dopes who spell duh "d'oh" have the excuse that they want to advertise their geeky achievement in being fans of the "Simpsons." I suppose your pleasure in your invented spelling is still owed to a kind of smug desire to advertise yourselves as "insiders" and "cool kids."
I think most people, including most junior-high students with any brains, would know that the correct spelling is p-s-y-c-h.
April 18, 2008 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry about your indignation...but duh and d'oh are not the same, dude. Word.
April 18, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone interested in this type of conflict between the two branches should check out the Congressional Research Services comments on the Constitution, i.e., this page.
CRS Annotated Constitution -- CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIONS
The first sentence is, "No provision of the Constitution expressly authorizes either House of Congress to make investigations and exact testimony to the end that it may exercise its legislative functions effectively and advisedly."
There is ample historical evidence that this kind of power was taken for granted at the time but the failure to make it explicit has led to many problems. It would seem to take an amendment to clarify this overall situation and restore something like a balance of power.
In general, I think we need to get past thinking that the Constitution was some perfect creation. In fact, it was version 1.0. We've had a couple of centuries of experience with how well it works and how it fails to work. I do not know what it will take to get a sufficient number of people who have real access to legislatures to take up this kind of project and access does not seem to be granted based on these types of concerns. At the time the Constitution was passed, there were real stakeholders involved, i.e., those involved knew they were going to have to live with the outcome. Now, we are required to accept that outcome.
It's a real puzzle. The Congress has no particular motivation to fix this and the "people" seem to think that concentrating power is a "good" thing. They get unhappy with when things don't go well but, for example, I would claim if 70% of the electorate was really upset about the Iraq War or the problems with the DOJ, stuff would happen because the legislatures and party leadership would know they were toast if they did not act. These folks are champions at sensing which way the wind is blowing or they would not be where they are today. I think it is very suspect and convenient to believe that these folks are really ignoring the will of the people. The electorate, for whatever reason, is tacitly going along with all this.
April 18, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, the consensus from the discussion you pointed to was pretty clearly to spell it correctly, i.e. "psych." 13 folks for "psych," with only 4 going for "sike" (one of whom was so pedantic as to imply sarcasm--junior high is a "pre-literate culture?"). So your pointer actually bolstered the counter-argument. Sorry, Paul.
April 18, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was in Junior High from 1983-1987, and we spelled it "psych." Maybe you ran with a pack with poor othography skillz.
April 18, 2008 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Paul, I'm afraid you and the clowns you ran with in junior high are wrong. Please refer to this entry in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valspeak
It's either "Psych!" or "Psyke!". And, as another poster mentioned, often in utterance the "P" was pronounced for emphasis, with a slight pause, "P-sych!"
I slightly pre-date the wide use of "Psych!" I grew up more during the "NOT!" age. (These two may have subtle differences in meaning, but in common usage, they're basically the same.)
Look, everybody comes from somewhere, and there are certainly regional variations in slang. But in this case I think it's clear that this expression *had* an origin, and was adopted by you (and everybody else), and therefore there *is* a right way to spell it -- and you're not using it.
As a friend of mine often says, "English is a living language."
To which I always reply, "Despite all efforts to kill it."
-- ARG
April 19, 2008 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is there to say? Rove is a scumbag. His attorney is a liar aka an attorney. Congress is packed full of eunuchs. The White House is packed full of criminals.
April 18, 2008 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I read the title, I had no idea what you meant by "sike." When I read the text, I thought it had something to do with a conjugation of the verb "siccing" (which you referred to in the text of the article). Thanks to the reader's comments, I now know what you were referring to.
April 18, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Crawfisher
April 18, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
What you meant to say was "SIKE (sic)!!!".
April 18, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Paul: High school's over. You're writing (sometimes) for adults now (psych).
April 18, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Urban Dictionary's #1 definition is wrong, the #2 and #3 are correct. Don't always believe what you read, and if one is not familiar with the parlance, one should not deign to use it.
April 18, 2008 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah now, you've entered another realm of error.
In context, what you really mean to say is: "...if you are not familiar with the parlance, you should not DABBLE IN IT. That which I deign to use, I am superior to. That which I mess with or dabble in may well get the better of me.
You offer me a plastic fork; I deign to use it although I am of royal blood, etc. I deign to share a table with you, etc. Something I am insufficiently familiar with (to avoid making mistakes with), I shouldn't mess with, shouldn't fool with, or, shouldn't dabble with (this verb being about as far from the ordinary as "parlance", which implies that there's a sort of technique involved in not coming off as a literal idiot or idiosyncratic, attempting to change things like spelling on a whim).
The problem with "Sike" is that it doesn't have any associations. There's the name Sikes, but I didn't even think of this till now. There is no such thing as a sike; no place is named sike; it's not a verb or a noun. And you just can't add entries like that to real language.
April 18, 2008 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was it GWB who said.... "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". Come on Karl, put you right hand on the Bible and......
April 19, 2008 8:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
How can you pardon someone who has never been convicted (speaking of Karl Rove)?
The real question, in my mind, is what the next President is going to do with all of those swirling questions concerning executive privilege that are being used as judicial cudgels? Will the next President pull a Gerald Ford and sort of issue a blanket amnesty so we can "move on", or will they let the wheels grind through the courts?
I don't think this is necessarily a easy question, much as many of us would like to see the perpetrators (or perpetraitors?) of the worst of W's abuses have to face justice for their actions.
A hornets nest, a big one.
April 19, 2008 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought Sike was the Greek goddess of bullshit.
April 19, 2008 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL!
I'm glad someone is emphasizing the Greek roots of psych/sike. The prior discussion link had someone mistakenly say psych was a Latin root, but the Romans didn't have cool letters like Ψ.
April 20, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess my hesitancy to invest in porcine aviation was well founded.
However, if and when Karl Rove actually testifies anywhere in the United States about anything he did while in the White House, I believe that I will sell all my other assets and invest all I own into porcine aviation.
April 21, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink