OLEAN -- It is still my contention the American public has become completely inured to political scandal and criminal behavior in Washington and the halls of government.
It is still my contention we have become a nation of deaf, dumb and blind sheep. We don't even bleat anymore when the political power structure pulls our own wool over our own eyes.
In the 1970s -- during the Watergate scandal, or during official argument over the Vietnam War, for instance -- had the FBI director, under oath, flatly contradicted the attorney general's sworn testimony in front of a Senate committee, protesters would have hit the streets, TV news shows would have been filled with little else, statements of public outrage would have been ubiquitous, editorial writers would have speculated on presidential impeachment hearings, calls for the AG's firing would have echoed throughout the land and the prosecutorial machinery for perjury indictments would have quickly clanked into gear.
Yet, when FBI director Robert Mueller, one of the Bush administration's few highly regarded public servants, last Thursday told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the legality of a secret Bush initiative to wiretap international phone calls was under intense debate within the Justice Department when it was revealed two years ago, the revelation did two things:
It turned a previous sworn description by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on its head.
It produced a big, collective yawn by the American public.
Gonzales, under withering congressional fire for being a pitifully obvious incompetent and apparently notable liar to boot, had previously described the wiretapping plan as a no-brainer that everybody in his shop agreed with, whether the calls originated or terminated in the United States. He had further testified there were "no disagreements" within the Bush administration over establishment of the controversial wiretapping plan. It was portrayed on the same level as deciding to go to lunch.
No matter what your views are on national security, anti-terrorism, military procedure, the Constitution, federal law, individual privacy, the behavior and competence of our intelligence agencies, or how far we should bend previously celebrated American standards to make ourselves feel safe, you shouldn't be in favor of the nation's top law enforcement officer routinely fibbing to Congress for political reasons.
Not only does it eat away at the fiber of American jurisprudence, it is terribly distracting to the conduct of the nation's business.
The House and Senate are still in a dither over the steadfast insistence of Gonzales and the White House that several top federal prosecutors -- men and women of sterling record and proven performance -- were not summarily sacked a few years back because they refused to cobble together fictitious charges against some strong Democratic candidates and prosecute them to the election-day benefit of Republican opponents. This denial, when evidence and sworn testimony indicate the opposite, and despite the Bush administration's failure to this day to come up with any believable excuse for firing the U.S. attorneys in question.
The White House is so politically terrified about that embarrassing subject it won't even allow President Bush's minions to go up to Capitol Hill and lie some more about it. So just before the weekend -- in another move that didn't draw much coverage -- the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas for Dubya's chief political adviser Karl Rove and for the White House deputy director of political affairs, Scott Jennings, Bush operatives suspected of coming up with the execrable firing plan.
Dubya asserts -- without any constitutional footing whatsoever -- that he has the absolute right as president to withhold the public testimony of those who offer him private advice. As Shakespeare might say, it is to laugh. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, are asking for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Gonzales and pursue perjury indictments because of the obvious contradictions in sworn testimony before them.
I'm not the only one calling the attorney general of the United States untruthful. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., stated flatly, "I'm convinced that he's not telling the truth."
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania told Gonzales to his face, "I do not find your testimony credible." Gonzales himself seems blithely untroubled by the whole affair. He spent the weekend ducking reporters and making private talks in the heartland to regional law enforcement officers, urging them to warn teenage girls about watching what they post online regarding their tastes and habits.
Folks, this congressional contretemps with the White House is the kind of thing that could expand into a constitutional crisis and make us even more vulnerable to terrorism -- and all the voting and viewing public can seemingly worry about is the persistent drug addiction of a no-talent grade-B actress. I am in league with those political analysts who believe Bush and his chancellor Rove are actually quite pleased with all the bother over Gonzales.
First, the attorney general serves as an effective lightning rod for Dubya's administration, allowing the rest of the miscreants and sub-miscreants in the Cabinet and federal hierarchy to go about their business while Congress sputters.
Second, it gives Dubya the option of letting Gonzales quietly resign during the August congressional recess when everybody in Washington blows town and you could paint the Capitol pink and green and it wouldn't draw news coverage. This would further allow Bush to make a quick recess appointment to replace Gonzales, which would let him bypass entirely the Senate confirmation process -- a laborious procedure at which Bush and Rove have absolutely no chance of succeeding under the current political climate.
Speaking of all things fishy, my accomplished explorer and marine biologist friend Steve Spotte -- former Niagara Falls resident and successful director of the Niagara Falls Aquarium in the late '60s and early '70s -- has written the most recent of his dozen or so books, a glossy scientific paperback titled "Bluegills: Biology and Behavior."
Published this summer by the prestigious American Fisheries Society in Bethesda, Md., this 214-page tome is neither designed as a popular non-fiction volume, advisory for sportsmen, nor the result of ground-breaking aquatic experiments. It is instead an unconventional, enlightening examination and analysis of existing scientific literature about the small, common panfish, with an intended audience of "biologists of diverse background" rather than just freshwater ecologists, fishery managers, ichthyologists, experimental biologists and specialists of more limited scope.
Spotte, who now works at the famous Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., explains in the introduction that he got the idea for the book while fly-fishing on Lake Istokpoga in central Florida with his pal (and mine) Keith Reynolds, a renowned and talented marine artist.
Spotte caught a bluegill on a grasshopper pattern fly and "it fought with fierce determination. When I lifted it out it gazed at me calmly. I returned the look, admiring its finny shape and glistening colors before tossing it back. ... I wondered vaguely what they were doing down there, and how they went about doing it."
That "what" and "how" are important. The author makes a great distinction between the two words, putting the emphasis on the latter -- much as I do when instructing budding journalists.
Spotte notes it is not enough merely to describe what bluegills do down there in the water: "Answering how requires knowledge of deeper processes like hydrodynamics, anatomy, physiology, and sensory biology. ... For example, reporting that bluegills sometimes remain motionless in the presence of a predator is tautologous, the what having been included in the observation. We need to know how this behavior enhances survival and not simply measure what we see, or think we see." This ordinary little fish with "extraordinary qualities" is important in marine studies. Bluegills, Spotte notes, "have long been used in the aquatic sciences as scaly wet laboratory rats. Biologists have studied them in the wild and in containers of all sizes and shapes, sometimes without recognizing the distinction."
Although containing 25 pages of footnotes, and with a bibliography 22 pages long, the book makes smooth reading and will be interesting to any layman who likes to fish, swim, or merely gaze across peaceful water. My great friend -- although trained in the sciences -- is one of the very best writers I know, and his always-enjoyable books include some fiction masterpieces such as "An Optimist in Hell" and "Home is the Sailor, Under the Sea: Mermaid Stories."
Spotte also wrote the instructional non-fiction books "Secrets of the Deep," "Marine Aquarium Keeping" and "Captive Seawater Fishes," but the work drawing the most recent attention was "Candiru: Life and Legend of the Bloodsucking Catfishes," published five years ago and documenting the reality of a spiny little fish that many had considered merely legend. The candiru -- "pest" in South American tribal language -- is alleged to swim up the penises, vaginas and anuses of unwary waders and swimmers in the Amazon and its tributaries -- especially if one tries to urinate under the surface. The fish must then be surgically removed.
That book, in Spotte's own words, is "a wild ride down foggy rivers where truth and legend intersect and become, if just for a moment, indistinguishable."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 31 2007 |