What Did the President Know and When Did He Know it?

It was the question that became a Watergate cliché, and it was asked by Senator Howard Baker, a member of Nixon's own party. (By the end of the Reagan years, of course, it had gone beyond parody and into farce: What did the president know and when did he stop knowing it?)

Now it has a whole new currency. What did your president tell Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor of this whole sordid mess, while he was under oath?

That's what it all boils down to, and few in the SCLM/MSM seem to be getting it. If Bush lied under oath to Fitzgerald, then all of this fancy-dance pussyfoot two-step parsing out of the quasi-legalities of declassifying official state secrets, or for that matter, debating the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin, means nothing.

If Bush lied under oath, then he is guilty of perjury and obstructing a federal investigation. This is exactly what landed Martha Stewart in prison. It doesn't matter whether what you actually did was legal or illegal. Lying under oath is a crime. Obstructing an investigation is a crime.

It doesn't matter a rat's ass what your motives are or what you were lying about, you committed a crime.

So, Baby Doc, as long as you are trying to take the high ground and justify what you did in the name of national security, how about releasing the full transcript of your testimony to Patrick Fitzgerald.

If you have nothing to hide, why are you trying so hard to hide it?