Oy

I heard this exchange on last's night Hardball...

MATTHEWS: No one has criticized the work of Patrick Fitzgerald? Often times you would find Richard Nixon going after like him (ph), because he fired him—Archibald Cox because he thought he was an overzealous liberal going after him back there in Watergate. No one seems to criticize Patrick Fitzgerald as being an overzealous. Nobody is calling him Ken Starr, nobody is trashing him in the media, have you noticed?.

DIONNE: The president doesn't leak. You can't get anything out of that office.

MATTHEWS: No. But nobody's been criticizing...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BEIRNE: Well, in fairness, Chris—in fairness, that has not been the M.O. of this administration...

MATTHEWS: Not to trash its enemies? ( Matthews let out his laugh)

O'BEIRNE: It has not...

MATTHEWS: Excuse me.

O'BEIRNE: I think that's terribly unfair. I mean, it was the way the Clinton administration, obviously, responded to—reacted to...

MATTHEWS: Do you think Valerie Wilson believes that they haven't—do you think Joe Wilson hasn't been trashed?

O'BEIRNE: Joe? Are we going to go back to the motives—are we going to go back to the motive, the supposed motive, the alleged motive for this? They could have and didn't. They didn't respond to this, because...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I think the way the president played hardball with their critics of the and everyone else that have had their basic motives questioned, we can go further. They have been very tough with their critics.

O'BEIRNE: Will you agree they responded very differently than the Clinton White House to a prosecutor?

MATTHEWS: You're right. That's true. To a prosecutor. I'll hold you to that. They've been very respectful to Patrick Fitzgerald in the way that Clinton was never respectful to Ken Starr, ever.

How on earth can O'Beirne hold the idea that this White House doesn't go after its critics? oy
I wonder what Wilson, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Scott Ritter or John Murtha would say about that. Can ya think of others?
And the difference in the 2 White House's reactions couldn't possibly be due to the difference in how the 2 prosecutors have conducted themselves now could it???