Artifacts

Ernie the Archeologist is so excited about his new uncovering, he can barely breathe. Digging for artifacts to support the proposition that a previously unknown civilization had existed in the digging vicinity, he and his crew had found exactly what they needed—if they played it right. What did Ernie and kind find? Ancient pottery shards? Black-aged bones? The ruins of prehistoric structures? No, they found an archeologist’s pickax. Early 21st century by most estimates. It was not embedded in a stratum of antediluvian sediment, but half-buried in some muck from the day or week before. So why does finding what is most likely a product of his own digging elate Ernie? Because it is something. Ernie went digging for something and indeed he found something. Never mind specifically what he was supposed to be looking for, the point is something was uncovered and that something is, in fact, related to human activity and civilization. Now, maybe finding a relic relevant to an ancient and unknown society, as originally hoped for, would have been better. But don’t underestimate the importance of what was indisputably found. Don’t try to minimize what the pickax may actually mean in the context of what it might insinuate or imply in some vague and illogical yet important way. Don’t you dare equate finding this something with finding nothing. This something says something loud and clear: We need more funding to continue digging.

Science provides a method for inquiry and that method uses reason, logic, empirical observations, and such as tools. You have to use those tools to make sure that what you find is really some independent something and not just something you created by looking, like Ernie’s pickax. This is a lesson that members of Congress and the political Mudia desperately need pounded into the sediment of their oh-so-soft heads. Recently we have had a multi-million dollar “independent” counselor and a who-knows-how-much-it’ll-cost Congressional committee in the role of Ernie searching to great sizzle and no steak.

First, Patrick Fitzgerald spends a gajillion dollars “investigating” the accusation that some Blue Meany in the Bush Administration—probably Dick Cheney, the Meany in Chief—revealed the identity of a CIA operator in order to embarrass her husband who was an Iraq War critic. Far fetched already. A pretty long-armed, Rube Goldberg, and ultimately lame way of “getting” someone when you are as ruthless and powerful as these suspects. Why no mickied drink at some prominent watering hole that would make him behave in an asinine manner in front of all assembled? Granted it would have to be an unusual type of this behavior in order to get noticed in DC—like ranting about the good chances of John Edwards’s presidential bid. Or, in the case of this man in particular, why not just follow him around with a clandestine taping device? He seems to say things that anyone outside the Beltway area would find discreditable every few minutes. Or just kill him. We are talking about Darth Cheney, after all.

So a fortune later, Mr. Fitz has absolutely nothing along the lines of what was sought. In fact, he finds that there was no crime to be investigated to begin with. The victim in question was a former, not a current, CIA official and she wasn’t even covered during her career by the identity-protection law. There was no “outing” to be done. That was easily discernable—and in fact was discerned—very early on and rather inexpensively. But he kept digging, and digging—no one stopped to ask why—until he found something. It seems that even though there was no crime to investigate, during the investigation of nothing Cheney’s top lieutenant, “Scooter” Libby, kind-of-sort-of lied, or misremembered, or misled the non-investigators. That is a crime. That is also a day-old pickax. This is not obstruction of justice, mind you, but obstruction of the investigation into nothing. It is the investigation itself that obstructed justice by continuing after it was known there was no reason to continue, because the diggers still needed to find “something”. So now we pay even more for a trial and punishment over the nothing.

Similarly, we have a group of gentlemen, very bluntly spearheaded by Chuck Schumer and Pat Leahy, investigating the Administration’s non-crime of firing US attorneys. Now this is even worse than the first case, because in this instance there is not even a hint or an allegation of a crime. The very worst thing that has happened is that Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales fired US attorneys. And since there is no illegal reason to do that, what exactly is being investigated? Impropriety, that’s what. So here, Ernie is digging not because there is any possibility of things to find, but because it is a pretty and convenient spot to dig. So, in this non-inquiry, the esteemed senators find that the AG may have initially misstated, misled, or obfuscated about his reasons for the walking papers. And such mis-answers were of course to questions that did not have any purpose in their asking to begin with, save making a nothing into a something. Or at least a political something, which is like a nothing but much more expensive. And what is being called misinformation? Here’s the gist of a question by Senator Schumer to a Gonzales aide:

You say you spoke to the Attorney-General about these matters, but he says he wasn’t very informed about them. So the Attorney-General is lying, then?

Wow. Got ‘im there. How informative is speaking? Don’t you lie now! This isn’t even a pickax. It’s a piece of metal that could be anything or one of its parts. That doesn’t even sound like a lie as much as a semantics mess. The senator is the one who sounds like he is trying to mislead here. But, it is clear that more funding, print space, and air time is needed to continue digging into these nothings. Not to do so would be such a waste,