Speaker Newt on In Depth (BookTV aka C-SPAN2)

This Sunday, December 2, Newt Gingrich was on C-SPAN2's BookTV on a monthly program called In Depth.

Now, I love watching Newt on C-SPAN. I don't agree with his knuckle dragging social conservatism, but he's really fun to watch. I remember watching him years ago debating a paleontologist as to whether T. Rex was primarily a scavenger or a hunter. (Newt argued for hunter, cause he's a Man.) More recently I saw him talking about how the bureacracy would be better if technology were applied to it. As an example he said we should UPS a package to each illegal immigrant and let UPS's tracking system find them. It was a joke of course, but I later saw one of the more dwarven Republicans using the same joke (maybe Tancredo?).

Anyway, naturally the topic of the Clinton impeachment came up. Newt said that the President cannot be above the law and defended his position.

But here's the fun part. He said--with a straight face--that Scooter Libby was sentenced to prison for what he did AS AN EXAMPLE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT A PRESIDENT SHOULDN'T BE ABOVE THE LAW!!!!

He mentions Scooter's jail sentence at 2:14:18 in the program. He says that the President should not be above the law 18 seconds later. And 11 seconds later he says Clinton is "fundamentally dishonest on a routine regular basis." I can think of another President that applies to--in fact, a President who promised to restore dignity to the White House.

Scooter and Cheney made it more difficult for the United States to recruit spies because potential spies now know that their probably illegal and risky work on behalf of the United States intelligence community might be exposed in political chess matches--and the President values loyalty to his law breaking minions over the safety of intelligence assets.