Indictment Round-up

Joe Wilson says this is a sad day for America, and no one should be celebrating.

Fuck that.

This is the highest ranking White House official to be indicted since Watergate. This administration is finally getting a small iota of the scrutiny and justice they so much deserve. And the universe is karmically righting itself after what happened to Clinton.

It's Indictment Day, and I'm gonna celebrate.

Some of the bloggers are even talking about naming this holiday. Best suggestions:

St. Patrick's Day
Cheneykah
Jailoween
Thankscuffing

Make your own.

And take a look at this telling, and at times hilarious profile of Fitzgerald in the Chicago Tribune.

Even for a man who always has kept spare ties and toiletries in his office because he sleeps there so often, the past several years have been hectic for Fitzgerald.

Since becoming the top federal prosecutor in Chicago in 2001, Fitzgerald has spearheaded a fraud investigation into the administration of Mayor Richard Daley and directed the ongoing corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan.He indicted 14 reputed mobsters for 18 unsolved murders, some dating back to 1970.

He went after alleged terrorists and routinely serves as one of the country's top experts on Al Qaeda, the terrorist network he has studied since 1996, when he first began investigating its leader, a then-unknown Saudi exile named Osama bin Laden.

[...]

"My parents--hardworking Irish immigrants--never understood being a government lawyer," said Fitzgerald, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and spoke with the Tribune last year for a Sunday magazine profile. "They expected me to take jobs that paid more at one of the big New York firms."

But Fitzgerald went to work in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan instead. A standout from Day One, he impressed even an office full of overachievers. To this day, his work habits are legendary among New York prosecutors. They recall how everyone knew to call the office first if they needed to reach him at 3 a.m.; how, when his father was dying, he hauled boxes of files home every weekend so he would keep up, even while nursing Patrick Fitzgerald Sr.

[...]

When New York colleagues moved on to other jobs, Fitzgerald often emceed their goodbye "roast" at a local Irish pub; friends point to his quick wit and instinctive ability to be funny, yet complimentary and kind. He loved the New York Mets--a loyalty he transferred to the Cubs when he moved to Chicago four years ago--and could down his fair share of Guinness beer on nights out with other prosecutors.

[...]

As the months wore on, Fitzgerald himself became an object of debate and speculation. But determining his motives was not an easy parlor game. Fitzgerald was branded a "runaway prosecutor" by segments of the punditocracy. Yet President Bush repeatedly has described Fitzgerald's probe as "very dignified," and congressional leaders of both parties long have said they trust Fitzgerald to get to the bottom of the leak.

[...]

With his move to Chicago, Fitzgerald said he hoped to find a "little bit more balance" in his life. He bought a nice home downtown; his friends still marvel at the difference between it and his New York apartment, a place so shabby that police officers investigating a neighbor's break-in once assumed Fitzgerald had been robbed too.

And take a listen to a prescient and funky Afrobeat song called "Indictment" by Antibalas (free sample on their site).

Random PS: the R consultant who did the Kilgore death penalty ads also did the smear campaign against Vietnam vet and amputee Max Cleland.