Frist Unfit

It looks like Bill Frist isn’t the best person the Senate Republicans could have found to be their majority leader after all. He’s an improvement over Trent Lott, thank heaven for that. But the best they have? The most fit for the job? No. He is not.
Frist accused Richard Clarke of committing perjury without evidence.

“Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath,” Frist said in a speech from the Senate floor, alleging that Clarke said in 2002 that the Bush administration actively sought to address the threat posed by al-Qaida before the attacks.
Frist later retreated from directly accusing Clarke of perjury, telling reporters that he personally had no knowledge that there were any discrepancies between Clarke’s two appearances.

Maybe Clarke did perjure himself. I don’t know. His testimony is classified. More important, Frist doesn’t know either. He said himself that he doesn’t know. Yet he stood there in the Senate chamber and called a man a criminal. As if it were a fact.
Josh Marshall says this will permanently change the way he sees Frist. The same goes for me.
Richard Clarke annoys me as much as he annoys his next critic. But that doesn’t mean it’s open season on him and that anything goes.
I haven’t seen the GOP attack machine in such an overdrive since the Clinton days. I’m used to seeing this kind of behavior lately from the Democrats. Now they’re both at it. In full force. At the same time.
This “national security” debate is all about the election. It has nothing to do with national security at all.