Need help with the Barrett Report:

I just rec'd this from a deluded friend (he swears he doesn't watch Faux, O'Reilly, etc., yet Tony Snow wrote this-go figure:eyes: ) This guy is trying to prove Clinton was up to his eyeballs in a wiretapping scandal. Does anyone have any links to the contrary I can shove down this guy's throat? Thanks.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/tonysnow/2005/12/09/178552.html

snip//
By all accounts, the 400-page Barrett report is a bombshell, capable possibly of wiping out Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential prospects. At the very least, it would bring to public attention a scandal that would make the Valerie Plame affair vanish into comical insignificance.

Democrats know this. Using provisions in the independent-counsel statute that permit people named in a report to review the allegations against them and file rebuttals, attorneys close to the Clintons have spent the better part of five years reviewing every jot and tittle of the charges arrayed against their clients and friends.

This careful and continuous monitoring of the report explains why Sens. Byron Dorgan, Dick Durbin and John Kerry took the highly unusual step earlier this year of trying to slip into an Iraq-war spending bill an amendment to suppress every word of the Barrett report. (Every other independent counsel finding has been printed in its entirety, with the exception of small sections containing classified material.)

Alert Republicans, pushed by talk-radio listeners and bloggers, managed to short-circuit that effort, but Democrats patiently pursued their goal. They got what they wanted recently, when the House and Senate met to iron out differences in yet another appropriations bill. Democrats inserted language that would prevent public release of the 120 pages of the report listing the Clinton transgressions. They offered what may have looked like a good deal. They promised not to object to letting Barrett continue with any prosecutions already underway.
snip//

about this Barrett Report. But any investigation funded by the taxpayers should be released upon completion for taxpayers to see.

I heard about this recently, probably just a distraction, but I would be interested in PROOF of this before I get all excited! I googled it and it is all over reight wingnuts blogs and 'news' blogs, and maybe something in San Diego or something. I was originally about Cisneros and his 'loans' to his girlfriend when he was head of housing?

Here is a link I found from the WSJ...note it was ONLY about defunding and not blocking the release. Seems this Special Prosecutor found himself a job that could NEVER end as long as it is funded..and the Repuks refused to stop funding, till the second time..and this time it was proposed by a Republican!

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113167356003094381-YSFPijJeiRlnqHy8rFujUD4p5oU_20061211.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

dead of night. I think my freeper friend is making mountains out of molehills cause he's got nothin!

By the way, this is the douchebag involved...

"Nearly a decade after he was appointed to investigate then-Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, independent counsel David M. Barrett spent more than $1.26 million of federal money in the last six months of fiscal 2004, the Government Accountability Office reported yesterday.
Since its inception, the Cisneros investigation has cost nearly $21 million, a total rivaling some of the largest independent counsel investigations in history. Much of the money has gone for pay and benefits, travel, rent and contractors.
...In March 2003, Barrett's judicial overseers ordered him to close shop and prepare his final report. Herry said Barrett's office told the GAO the current expenditures are associated with the preparation of that report.
But total expenses in the last half of 2004 were not much less than the $1.58 million spent in the final months of 1999, when Cisneros was in court. In the six months ending Sept. 30, 2004, Barrett's office spent $452,888 on pay and benefits, $51,102 on travel, $262,743 on rent and bills, $346,829 on contractors and other experts in areas related to the investigation, and $142,610 on administrative services. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17129-2005Mar31.html

Thanks for the link.

Cisneros pled guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a piddly fine years and years ago....but Barrett grinds on, investigating nothing at all.

<http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113167356003094381-CDSYkOj1lJPi4mm3pPHpkob3xtE_20061112.html?mod=rss_free>

all the rest are basically compiled from right wink bloggers and columnists such as William Safire (who mentioned it today) and Robert Novak.

From this article:

An end to this story may, in fact, be in sight, though not without some final political intrigue. Late last month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered Mr. Barrett to publish a report "with all deliberate speed" and close his office.

.. some other interesting passages:

The proposal died in the House. A senior Republican aide recalls that staff members to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who recently had to step aside from his leadership post after being indicted on money-laundering charges, told a committee to kill the proposal (to end the investigation) because the Cisneros report had "a lot of dirt on ex-Clinton types, and they're fighting it."

.... If the judicial panel that oversees Mr. Barrett had its way, there would be no Cisneros report either -- and its members are not Clintonites. Presiding Judge David Sentelle is a Reagan appointee, whom Democrats still resent for replacing the original Whitewater prosecutor with Kenneth Starr. The other two judges were named by Presidents Nixon and Carter.

....For those named in Mr. Barrett's report, meanwhile, a five-year statute of limitations for prosecution has passed.

So it appears it is mostly about politics and trying to embarass the Clintons, particularly Hilary Clinton because a fried of hers was head of the IRS at the time.

enlightenment! :hi: