"I don't know if it rises to the level of the destruction of the CIA Tapes. Well, of course it does."
So said Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) last week. The topic...
Alberto Gonzalez?
Illegal wiretaps?
Torture of detainees?
Squalid living conditions for returning troops at Walter Reed?
Scooter Libby?
Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.
Try the New England Patriots. Yeah, the football team in the NFL. Apparently, the U.S. Senator from the East Falls section of the city is so fired up following his one-on-one meeting yesterday with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that there is a strong possibility that Specter could call Congressional Hearings about the matter.
Yes, we're still talking about football here.
You see, Specter, as he told reporters, is a fan of football. In fact, he's been a fan for a really, really long time. Actually, Specter is so much of a fan that he seems to believe that the sovereignty of our union is at stake unless we get to the bottom of why (oh why!) the Patriots, at the order of coach Bill Belichick, secretly taped opponents as they practiced the plays they were going to use in a game in final walkthroughs. Never mind that Specter and his colleagues <i>refused</i> to force members of the executive branch to speak under oath for other investigations, but the thought that the Patriots are getting away with something and the evidentiary tapes were destroyed by the league...
"The commissioner sought to downplay the issue about the utility, but from information we've received, there was opportunity for the signal to be transmitted to the quarterbacks so they could utilize these signals that they taped in violation of NFL rules," Specter told the L.A. Times. "I found a lot of questions unanswerable because of the tapes and notes had been destroyed."
Shudder!
With his writers back in the office, Jon Stewart tackled (hey, a pun) the football controversy on "The Daily Show."
But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, Specter's delving into the "Spygate[1]" controversy just goes deep into the pile of legacy-making material for the Senator. Think about it - as the assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, Specter authored the "single-bullet theory," thus eliminating the threat of conspiracy from the official record of the Kennedy Assassination.Recently, of course, Specter had been critical of the Bush Adminstration's wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants and threatened to hold hearings on the matter. However, when he called then attorney general Alberto Gonzalez to speak to the judiciary committee, he was allowed to do so without taking an oath.
In other words, the investigation was a great, big show. Kind of like what's going on now.
[1] I really hope that someone trademarked the -gate suffix. Hopefully, a nickel in royalties goes to the remaining members of Richard Nixon's criminal gang, or at least to the general fund of his library in Yorba Linda. But I suspect that if there is a trademark on the -gate suffix that Woodward, Bernstein or Bradlee are raking it in.