Absence of evidence

The argument that there was a conspiracy of Democrats or even perhaps a Gay Cabal to release, just before the elections, damning evidence about Mark Foley and a Republican cover up is probably the worst defense I have ever heard. That they are resorting to it means several things, the most likely is that they know their base is deranged enough to except a blatantly fallacious and irrelevant argument if it means they can still support the Party of Evil. It’s also likely that they know they have lost the 60 or so percent who are fed up enough and reasonable enough to see through a rudimentary distraction from Foley’s guilt and Hastert’s negligence.

That they have no evidence whatever for such a conspiracy was apparent enough during the exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Rep Patrick McHenry (R-NC) yesterday. Directly asked whether he had any evidence that the Democrats had timed the release of evidence against Foley, he danced around and around and refused to answer. The pathetic closing remark was “do you have evidence that they didn’t?” And of course since we don’t have evidence that Ming the Merciless from Planet Mongo wasn’t behind it, it must be true. And of course since the pederasty charges are inconvenient to the Republicans they must not be true.

CNN and MSNBC announced early this afternoon that Adam Gadahn, the American Citizen who has been appearing in al Qaeda videos, will be charged with treason. Should we question the timing of this action? Will we be seeing more useless actions of this kind right before the election that makes it seem as though the Bush administration is actually doing something and that makes it seem like some dreadful danger is lurking everywhere? Of course and will we see any questions about the timing of such announcements on Fox? Of course not. I have no evidence that these charges weren’t timed to influence the election, and so it must be true.

In any case it is hard to convict anyone of treason. The hysteria surrounding the conviction of Tokyo Rose more than half a century ago did produce a conviction that resulted in a Presidential pardon and It seems strange to me that Japanese war criminals who murdered vast numbers of innocent civilians were set free, but the Charge of Treason may be more useful as a distraction from greater things and a cover up for the mistakes of people who will not be punished.

Expect many more distractions and more fear mongering and more blame shifting in the coming weeks. These are desperate times for the Republicans.