Friday, March 30, 2007

122 times

I forget, I don't remember, I can't recall, I am unable to think, I think I hear my mother calling me....
"I can't pretend to know or remember every fact that may be of relevance," he warned at the start -- and he wasn't kidding. He used the phrase "I don't remember" a memorable 122 times.

It may have been a tactical effort to limit his risk of perjury, but [Kyle] Sampson displayed the recall of a man who recently fell off a ladder.

"Since the 2004 election, did you speak with the president about replacing U.S. attorneys?" Leahy asked.

"I don't ever remember speaking to the president after the 2004 election," he said. (He later remembered that he had.) "Did you have further communications with the White House regarding the plan to regard and replace several U.S. attorneys?"

"I don't remember specifically."

"I wish you did remember," Leahy finally said. "I would hope that you would search your memory as we go along."

[snip]

After Schumer elicited three consecutive I-don't-remembers, John Cornyn (R-Tex.) objected to the questioning style.

Leahy overruled him. "We're trying to find what in heaven's name he does remember," the chairman said.

Schumer persisted, eventually asking the witness a question about Rove's role. "I don't remember," Sampson said. "I don't remember anything like that. I don't think so. I don't remember. I don't remember."

2 comments:

Steve Bates said...

I DO remember... the only time I was ever involuntarily subjected to a speech by John Cornyn. It was on an upstairs patio shared by several restaurants and bars in The Village, a neighborhood of trendy shops near Rice University, and Cornyn, not yet Senator Cornyn, was speaking outdoors to a fundraiser at the bar next door. ("How could I ignore... the [bar] next door...")

What a piece of work that man is. He is the perfect toady to help disrupt the process of finding out what is really going on... although it sounds as if his fellow amnesiacs were doing a good job of disruption without his help.

ellroon said...

Thanks for the vignette of the guy. He sounds tiresome and sleazy. (A real politician's politician...or just a frustrated used car salesman...)

I'm wondering if the weird break in the hearings was to tell Kyle something and they had to get him away from the table...