The Maximum Leader is my good and respected friend… yadda, yadda, yadda.

(The Maximum Leader and I only prefix our comments with respectful murmerings because we don’t want you readers out there to think we are nasty to one another. When alone, we simply reach across the table and go for the jugular. We’ve been friends now for half our lives so we know that we only mean the best. That said, I now return to the regualrly scheduled smack down).

Your humble Smallholder is well aware of the standard of proof in a criminal trial.

I could be mistaken - and the Maximum Leader seems to think I am - but I don’t believe the inquiry into Wolfowitz’s behavior is occuring in a court of law.

Applying a criminal trial level of proof to this case is a bit disingenuous. And even if it was a criminal case - it might be because the Maximum Leader wants to apply this standard - that doesn’t mean that everyone should refrain from commenting because we have to wait to see how things shake out.

Even in a criminal trial, it is perfectly acceptable for non-jury members to derive and talk about opinions based on the facts presented. I went way out on a limb and said that the Menendez brothers and O.J. were guilty, guilty, guilty. Hell, I’ll say that O.J. killed Nicole AFTER the not guilty verdict.

When someone says that the press and the public should not draw conclusions until after the court case is over (or in this case, if I’m not mistaken, until the board inquiry is over), you can guarantee that the facts are not on their side and they want to ignore those facts.

Most of our readers are to the right of center, so I’ll ask how everyone felt about refraining from judging during the lead up to Clinton’s impeachment trial. Did you all try to shush fellow conservative bloggers because Monica’s claims had not been proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt? Of course not.

Reasonable people can look at two people lying and make a reasoned judgment. But we don’t need to do that in this case. The former general counsel, in the same article I linked, also says that Wolfowitz acted improperly. Addtionally, Bennet, Wolfowitz’s lawyer, doesn’t dispute the actions his client took on his client’s behalf. He simply says that the ethics board approved. On NPR this morning I heard Bennet recast that argument in light of the conflicting stories presented by MORE THAN ONE other bank employee. “We didn’t mean that they approved, we just meant that they weren’t deceived and my client would have explained his actions if they had asked.”

One can’t fault the Maximum Leader for not knowing about Bennet’s “clarification,” but even if the Maximum Leader missed the second person corroborating the ethics story in the article I linked, his dismissive “there is nothing to see here!” doesn’t make sense. The very fact that hearings are being held leads a reasonable person to conclude that something is indeed rotten in Denmark.

If there wasn’t loads of evidence that Wolfowitz acted improperly there wouldn’t even be a discussion. The governing board of the World Bank is in an awkward position. Firing Wolfowitz will bring them into conflict with Bush, so they would like for this whole thing to go away. Unfortunately for the board, the staff of the world bank is so upset about Wolfowitz’s leadership that they won’t let it go away. The next best option would have been for Wolfowitz to leave voluntarily or for Bush to ask for his resignation. That’s not happening either. Wolfowitz is a fighter and Bush has restated his confidence in Wolfowitz.

(Here’s another issue aside from the cronyism that the Maximum Leader doesn’t want to discuss: What exactly does an appointee have to do to lose the confidence of this president? Get caught engaged in homosexual Satanic rituals while drinking the blood of Bald Eagles?)

The cronyism is an issue in this administration, but I didn’t address that point. I did say that cronyism is a problem in third world economies. I then made the link that said that the appearance of cronyism at the World Bank would make it harder to sell reforms to tinpot third world kleptocracies.

That is what makes it newsworthy. There is hardly, as the Maximum Leader purports, a “salacious” angle. No one is particularly titilated by images of Woflowitz and his fiftyish paramour getting on (except perhaps the pugnaciously prurient, persistently priapic Big Hominid*). There is a news story here and it is no less a news story because it makes right wing apologists uncomfortable.

But since the Maximum Leader brings it up: Cronyism is a problem in this administration. Is there anyone left who is so delusional as to believe that Bush gets the best advice available to Americann leadership? Bush’s reliance on an inner circle Praetorian guard and discomfort with conflicting views is a real problem.

Of course, take my opinions with a grain of salt. I’m not the all-knowing Maximum Leader. I’m just an inbred agrarian. Perhaps this really is a criminal trial and my reading skills are too poor to understand that the news articles we linked to are about courtroom procedures.

* The Big Hominid has nothing to do with this. But the alluring alliterative aura of that phrase led me to launch an undeserved ad hominem on the Hominid. I could have chosen someone else, but then I couldn’t have paired ad hominem with Hominid. Small pleasures and all that.