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Daily Show On Harman-AIPAC
Jon Stewart had a good segment last night on the convoluted Jane-Harman/AIPAC affair, which brought out both the byzantine nature of the saga, and the ultimate fact that nothing much came of any of the scheming: Harman didn't get the intel job, the AIPAC guys didn't get off, and Haim Saban didn't withhold money from Democrats.
As Stewart put it: "Your government, not at work."
Watch:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Your Government Not at Work - Jane Harman Scandal | ||||
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Josh
Zachary
That's funny. I was really busy last week and didn't read the past the headlines on this story. This week I'm not so busy, but didn't feel like going back through all that to find out what the deal was. Thank you, Jon Stewart, for reducing the whole thing to its essence. Silliness, of course, but I get the idea and no longer feel like a slacker for not backtracking.
April 29, 2009 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Palace of Versailles, back during the days of the Bourbon monarchs, partly served as a place for courtiers to engage in endless meaningless intrigues so they wouldn't get around to actually doing anything relevant. Nice to see the Villagers have managed to recreate that function on the Potomac.
Now all we need is to guillotine the whole bunch.
April 29, 2009 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great recap by Stewart except it seems Stewart misrepresented a key piece to the theme of the piece. Funny, yes. Correct, no.
The NY Times actually *did* spike the piece on the warrantless wiretapping for a full year until after the 2004 elections. (Even the NYT cops to this http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html). Questions remain as to whether Harman was a key factor in the decision.
Please Jon, don't sacrifice the truth for a laugh line.
April 29, 2009 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not impossible that both accounts are correct. Accounts on when the wiretap of Harman occurred vary from 2004 to 2006, so it's plausible (to me, anyway) that Harman attempted to bring additional pressure on the NYT later, after they'd already delayed running the story, but failed to completely stop them from printing it.
April 30, 2009 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
maybe I'm confused, but I thought that Harmon (and others) working the NYTimes was relevant to Harman who may have been instrumental in delaying public disclosure of potentially illegal wire taps was angry that SHE was perhaps illegally wietapped. But the Harmon / Saban (Maybe) /attempt to "spring" the soon to be indicted and to become former AIPAC workers as (maybe)as a QPQ for AIPAC's (maybe) help with Getting Harmon the Intel job...and it look as if the ex-AIPAC guys' prosecution may dissolve, anyhow.
One interpretation is that with all of that nothing got done. Anoother is that DoJ never had anything illegal on the ex-AIPAC guys and that with all of the press and blogger controversy hype about Harmon and Saban and AiPAC and so forth, nothing really happened except that the press and bloggers were really writing fiction.
April 29, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If she were agreeing to pimp for spies from any other country she might be up on charges.
This incident tells us more about our government than I really want to know.
April 29, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you Jon Stewart for making the US Government look like the "US Government" - incompetent and ineffective.
.
April 30, 2009 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, but the perps WERE let off! The government has now dropped the charges!
Thanks very much to Jane Harman (D-Israel).
May 2, 2009 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink