628hig

From: jbhigdon@townsend.com

Subject: More on Condit

BC:

I've commented on the rant that was supposed to convince me.

Hmmm, ...you open with a cheap shot?
Unexpected.
I better raise shields.

The "challenge" you sent me was dated 6 AM.
I posted what I posted close to noon.
I wasn't trying getting smart with you - your clock is wrong. (Or you have superpowers.)
That's why I said, "Read my piece and see if I answered your questions," or whatever it was I said.
Cheeses, you looking for a fight, eh?

Ok, ...let's get rough n ' tumble on Gary Condit.
(mild applause...)

And if you accept my challenge to a debate on this issue,
I've done you a favor by giving you a sample of my style in advance.
After all, I know yours.
I've cc'd Christian on this because she's a mutual friend,
and this is important enough to me to want to be sure you get it.
I know you get a lot of e-mails, and miss some.

Hey, any friend of Christian's...

> "Let's assume they had a relationship.
> Let's assume they did cocaine together.
> Let's assume they had sex while high on the coke.
> Let's assume he believes her coke connection killed her, but now she's gone,
> and he's really a good congressman, he really wants to help, so why should he
> endanger a career that will "help the people," over some coke deal that went bad
> that he had nothing to do with? Speaking up is career suicide, right?
> The word "IF" means something."

No, let's not assume. Assume makes an ass out of u and me.

That's cute, but it's crazy talk.
If you point a gun at me, am I an ass to assume it's loaded?
If you drive over a bridge, are you an ass to assume the bridge won't collapse?
That's crazy talk.

Assuming guilt of someone is what they do in Cuba.
What we do here is "presume innocence," while following verifiable (the kind that a court of law will accept) evidence.

You can't be serious.
I didn't mean, "He doesn't deserve a trial."
I meant, "Let's assume for a moment..."
When a lives-alone, married politician with a sick wife is less-than forthcoming about the
disappearance of a young girl with a mystery "older boyfriend," the cops gotta wonder why.

You need to remember something - we're playing by Condit's rules.
He's the smug bastard who said, "drip, drip drip doesn't get the job done."
Gary calls the tune - Gary pays the piper.

Let's not assume that they had sex, drugs, or rock 'n' roll because we have NO verifiable facts to that effect.
Let's not even assume that there is a dead body somewhere!
Why?
Because we have no verifiable facts to that effect.
Yes, words mean something--and "gone" doesn't mean "dead."

ha ha

Spoken like a true gambler.
Looks like we're past the talking stage, now we need to get out our wallets.
That poor girl is as dead as D.B. Cooper.
That's a bad thing that nobody wants, but it's the only logical road open to you
when she goes missing for months without her purse, luggage and car keys,
and her "good friend," needs to keep something hidden.

>"Again, this is like Law & Order."

That's a Limbaugh statement if I ever heard one. No--this is not like Law & Order.
That's a TV show where nobody gets hurt, nobody gets convicted, nobody goes to jail, and nobody's life gets ruined.
This is real life here, where real people can suffer a lot of damage by emotional outbursts that are ultimately meaningless.

ha ha

Is this a gag?
Artie, is that you?

Maybe my writing skills are so much more worse than I think, (that'd be an assumption)
but how do you read that into my Law & Order statement?

What "Again, this is like Law & Order," means is every time they talk to the deceased's boss,
the co-workers, the ex-husband, they always lie on the first round. Always.
The nutty TV cops never say the words, "This is felony murder, asshole.
If you lie to us, about any small detail, we'll charge you as an accessory."

The reason TV cops don't say that is because it'd ruin the drama.
The guilty guy always lies in the first interview or there'd be no show!
You suggest I think this is some damn TV show where nobody gets hurt?

...perhaps you were excited when you wrote this, and didn't choose your words carefully?

"This is real life here?"

Is that really the hill you want to die on?
That BartCop can't tell TV from real life?

>They should tell Condit.
>"This ain't no blow job.
>This matters.
>This counts.
>This means something.
>We have a missing woman.
>She's probably dead.
>And you, congressman, '...would rather not make a statement?'
>This isn't Newt playing hypocritical games with taxpayer's money."
>Why don't they put some pressure on this guy?"

Were you there? Was somebody you know there, that told you what went down.
I'll grant you that the LAPD is joke, but this isn't being conducted by the LAPD.
Most of the police I've known are highly competent people. They know very well
how to question people--even in front of their lawyers. Actually I've had the opportunity to
watch a couple in action--and they're better than the ones on Law & Order--just not as dramatic.
What I haven't heard from the police is that Mr. Condit is being evasive.
I've only heard that from you and the press.
Do you really want to get into an argument with me on how accurate the press is?

First,
the police have not released a statement thanking Rep Condit for being
"as forthcoming as any police department could expect from a citizen."
I wonder why they haven't released that statement.
Until they do, I'm going to wonder what he's hiding.

Second,
we both know the press are whores.
But if not for the press, I wouldn't know who Gary Condit was.
But you think trying to tie me, BartCop, to the press is a good debate tactic?
Are you having a bad day?

>"If he's not the killer, he doesn't need to confess.
> he just needs to tell what he knows about her private life."

To whom? To you?
Why do you need to know anything about Levy's private life?
Maybe Condit knows something that's embarrassing about her private life,
but might be related to her disappearance. Why should he tell you what that is?
What are you going to do about it? Maybe he just ought to tell the police?
And then--how do you know that he hasn't?
Were the police somehow required to tell you, or the press, afterward?

I wonder why they haven't released that statement.

Sidebar:
I heard a story yesterday about an unsolved hit-and-run in a small town, maybe in NY state.
The hit-and-run went unsolved for a year or two, until 60 Minutes came to town and started digging.
Turns out, the victim was hit by the town's mayor, who was wearing a dress at the time,
and his gay lover was also in the car, also in a dress.

Not surprisingly, the mayor tried to hide his involvement.
All I want Condit to do is explain himself, and damn the political repercussions.

I realize you haven't had a chance to respond to this yet, but we're still playing by Condit's rules.
At least I am, anyway. Putting a mirror on the enemy has always been a BartCop staple.
He says that whole, "Drip, drip, drip" thing is for guilty losers.
Well, now he's the guilty loser.

>"Y'know, this wouldn't be a problem for me. I'd stand on my pub & grill's deck and say,
>"She was a waitress at my club. She was a good kid, I liked her a lot - I even loaned her money.
>Not sure about her last hours, but I'll be happy to answer any questions the cops have.""

God in Heaven, how soon we forget our history!
Didn't someone named Richard Jewel try to do just that?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...

He did the exact opposite of that.

Richard Jewel hid in his house under his Momma's kitchen table like Bernie Shaw.
I wrote about it, and I was telling the truth at the time.
I said, if I was Jewel, I'd step outside and say, "Get to know me. Let's play poker. Have a beer with me.
Let's take in a Braves game. Come sit on my damn couch. Ask me whatever questions you want."
But noooooooooooooo. Jewel hid, just like Condit, and that made him look guilty.

You can say it wasn't fair.
You can say Jewel wasn't a media figure.
You can say a hundred things but when he tried to hide, he looked guilty.

>"THAT'S how an innocent man talks."

In all of my experience, and research into criminal law, I can tell you that there is no particular way that an innocent man talks. That might be how you'd handle it, but I'm sure Richard would warn you to duck after you said it.

You might have half a point there.
MY point is when you say, "Get to know me. Let's play poker.
Let's take in a Braves game. Come sit on my damn couch. Ask me 1,000 questions."
That's a man daring the press to catch him in a lie.

If Jewel had done that, some half-honest reporters might write,
"He doesn't seem like the killer type - I wonder how strong the evidence is against him?"

>"You're saying if Condit, in his own mind, feels that he's probably innocent,
> he has no obligation to tell the truth when a young woman is missing?"

I'd say that Condit, in his own mind, doesn't consider himself "probably" anything.
He knows whether he is guilty or innocent, and you don't.
Nor do you have any idea in regard to guilty or innocent of what.
But as a friend of Levy's, I'd say that he has the moral obligation to tell the police anything that
might be useful in finding out where she went (presuming, of course, that she wants to be found).

Again, you have half a point.
You say he has a "moral obligation" to talk.
I think Mr. Drip, drip, drip has more obligation than that.

>"I'll put it this way:
>He's as innocent as Smirk is on the cocaine question.
>If he can't say, "That didn't happen," then it probably did happen."

Well, thank you, Fidel, for passing down your judgment!

ha ha

Does this mean the gloves are off?
James Higdon, frequent bartcop.com contributor is calling me "Fidel?"

I have opinions. I often state said opinions on my dot.com.
You can agree or disagree or decide to not dial up bartcop.com
But I'm not "Fidel" for explaining the political consequences of saying, "No comment,"
when they can't find the dead girl's body.

I'll bet,
if I asked you if you've ever sodomized a goat in Idaho,
I'll bet your answer would be, "No."

But if your answer was, "No comment," well, to quote you, "words mean something."
There's a light year between, "I did not have sex with that animal, ...the goat," and "No comment."

Personally, I'd like to stay here in America, where a jury looks at real evidence, after qualified authorities
conducted a thorough investigation. Since you seem to know more than the rest of us--what exactly is
the "that" that you are referring to?

...biting my tongue,

You call me Castro?
You say you prefer American justice to Cuban justice?
You trying to make me Fidel's boy, while you wrap yourself in the American flag?

...biting my tongue,

as you attack me,
I think might not mean every word you're writing.
Perhaps we're drinking some beer tonight?

>"Her "false illusions" made Condit lie to the murder po-lice?"

Again--since you seem to know more than the rest of us--what lies did he tell the police?

Maybe the DC cops are as crooked as the LA cops.
Until they say "We've eliminated Condit as a suspect," I will suspect a guy who can't
tell the full story of his involvement with this girl to the American voters.

Do I have a right to think that way?
Or would that opinion make me Cuban?

>"What if this lady is alive?
>Should we wait another 3 weeks to find out?"

Wait a minute--I thought she was wrapped in a sheet in Condit's trunk!!?

That's so crazy, it must be an attempt at comedy.
Granted, in print it's hard to separate shinola from sarcasm,
but you're the guy who explained to me that this was no TV program,
so I'm forced to assume that you were trying to make a vaild point.

If you claim you were kidding, how do you justify your "This ain't no TV program" attack?

When did she come back to life?
You mean you don't know if she's alive or dead--but we need to fry Condit?

ha ha

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.
"We need to fry Condit before we know the facts."

For sure, ...that's how we do it in Cuba...

Gee, BC, maybe justice isn't the issue here,
but your own vendetta against Condit for his "crimes" against Bill Clinton.

Thank you for catching that the two are related.
Second time, ...I realize you haven't had a chance to respond,
but I'm playing this "game" using Condit's rules.