The American Spectator

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Calling them a "shameless display" and "cake taker," Tina Brown becomes the lastest Clinton groupie and liberal admirer of Patrick Fitzgerald to blast Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for her comments on Meet the Press last Sunday. "Hutchison had the gall to blandly rabbit on about overzealous prosecutors and perjury just being an itsy-bitsy crime," Brown writes.

Of course, that's not what Hutchison said at all. Listen for yourself:

"...I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. So they go to something that trips someone up because they said something in the first grand jury and then maybe they found new information or they forgot something and they tried to correct that in a second grand jury....

On behalf of all the Tina Browns out there, host Tim Russert followed up with this:

"But the fact is perjury or obstruction of justice is a very serious crime and Republicans certainly thought so when charges were placed against Bill Clinton before the United States Senate. Senator Hutchison.

Not one to be entrapped, Hutchison responded:

"Well, there were charges against Bill Clinton besides perjury and obstruction of justice. And I'm not saying that those are not crimes. They are....I think that it is important, of course, that we have a perjury and an obstruction of justice crime, but I also think we are seeing grand juries and U.S. attorneys and district attorneys that go for technicalities, sort of a gotcha mentality in this country.

As it happens, Brown has some troubles of her own in the truth-telling department. She ends her column today with a clarification of how last week she characterized former New York Times managing editor Gerald Boyd's dealings with Judith Miller and her editors, whom Brown claimed Boyd had overruled on Miller's behalf. Before having to give an irate Boyd the last word, Brown now notes she "mistakenly did not speak to [him] in advance." Was it an itsy-bitsy mistake?

topics:
Bill Clinton, NATO