Manuel Miranda: Covered in Glory and Spreading Democracy
This week’s New Yorker added some interest to my humdrum morning commute to Manhattan. There was Hendrik Hertzberg praising Mike Huckabee’s authenticity in the “Talk of the Town,” yet another sign that the former Arkansas governor is working some kind of voodoo magick over all agents of the national press.And then I turn to this entry by Jeffery Toobin on the magick resurrection of Manuel Miranda, the former lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee and counsel to Bill Frist. The one who got fired for exploiting a glitch in a computer system back in 2003, capturing e-mails belonging to Dems on the committee and disseminating them to right-wing news outlets.
At the time he said the e-mails were fair game since there was no password protection on the accounts; so no laws were broken.
And it’s a really good thing that this guy’s not technically a criminal because he’s now working for the State Department as Director of Legislative Statecraft at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. In other words, he’s teaching the Iraqis how to make laws.
For the love of god, don’t we at least owe them the chance to screw that one up for themselves?veracifier, Kevin Brannon, Senate Judiciary Committee, new yorker, Manuel Miranda, Director of Legistative Statecraft, Memogate, Jeffery Toobin, Hendrik Hertzberg, U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
