US Senate hearing on Megrahi release...

The other day, I found myself wondering what those valiant seekers after truth, Senators Menendez, Lautenberg, Gillibrand and Schumer were up to these days. There was plenty of coverage of Scottish and Westminster Governments' refusals to be put to the question by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the American Senate on the compassionate release of Mr Megrahi. As regular readers will recall, while styling themselves humble servants of clarity, throughout these American politicians have behaved disgracefully, cooking up wild allegations, deliberately misunderstanding processes, impugning the integrity of people unable to respond on the same public terms, persisting in their innuendos once furnished with the correct facts - and generally showing the worst of bad faith. I certainly accept that folk have a right to ask questions, to dispute the justness of decisions, to make up their own minds. I'm no tyrant of the mind and accept that reasonable people can reasonably differ on the compassionate release. A fair-minded exploration of the facts and an attempt to understand what transpired has not been much in evidence here. Instead, Menendez and friends delivered an amateur dramatic troupe's rendition of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. That said, Scottish advocate Jonathan Mitchell QC also makes a series of vital points about the Scots law and policy on compassionate release, including the real possibility that if MacAskill had rejected Megrahi's application, the decision could be judicially reviewed - and reviewed successfully. Moreover, the looming pachyderm in the chamber is the more fundamental question - never raised in the U.S. Senate hearing - whether Megrahi was properly convicted or whether he was the victim of a miscarriage of public justice.

Alex Salmond rebuffed their innuendos and allegations in a series of stingingly clear letters, many of which I've replicated here before for your information. Rather less attention was paid to what actually transpired in Washington in the absence of Hague, Straw, Salmond or MacAskill. Helpfully, our American friends extensively cover and archive the operations of their legislature on C-SPAN, so finding the relevant footage was  rather straightforward. Menendez convened a small clutch of his fellows and took evidence on the 29th of September in the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Needless to say, our friendly senators lived down to expectations...

"Stonewalling" (v).

I don't know about you, but I've been following American Senators Robert Menendez, Kirsten Gillibrand, Frank Lautenberg and Charles Schumer's barely-half-informed innuendo and bare-faced defamation at a distance, without seeing the whites of their eyes at it were. I like to put names to faces, and a quick search yielded all four arrayed in this sententious, scandalous wee press conference.

You may be surprised by the extent of the clear, uncompromising claims they're making, despite the want of substantiating evidence. I certainly was.  While my expectations were low, I hadn't quite taken cognisance of  the depths of iniquity and slander to which these self-seeking U.S. politickers are willing to sink. They're like offended children, eyeing their geometry homework without comprehension, having daydreamed through the whole class in which the various principles and their complexities were explained to them. "I don't understand", they mew. "I wasn't listening - and it is all your fault!" Humble creatures these, they'd have you believe, bravely taking on powerful commercial interests, wielding only the torch of truth for illumination, hacking at a noxious thicket of cover up and conspiracy. I imagine this rather appeals to that Manichean, self-righteous bent in America's account of itself and its politics. All of which might be rather more interesting, if any of the individuals involved showed the slightest interest in the subject they declaim over with such exaggerated and clownish gravity.  Without any apparent familiarity with the distribution of devolved powers in the UK, the clearly available public record, without acknowledging the papers which have already been published online, the senators permit themselves outrageous defamations and warrantless allegations. In short, their behaviour bears all the hallmarks of bad faith, or as someone else styled it, simple "grandstanding". George Kerevan expands on the theme in an article in today's Scotsman. Last week, Love and Garbage summoned our imaginations away to a thoroughly amusing parallel universe in pointed parody of the whole escapade.

Just a couple of bits of footage for today, then, for those of you who've not had the pleasure of seeing the US senators at first hand. Firstly, I'd encourage you to actually take a peek at this BBC video of Senator Menendez latest (I suspect actually somewhat abashed) press conference, in which he issued cries of "stonewalling" and encouraged those witnesses who rebuffed his accusatory advances - presumably including Jack Straw and Kenny MacAskill but not Tony Blair - to attend a rescheduled Senate hanging and haranguing, as a mechanism to - I kid ye not - "clear their names".  If you're not familiar with the other three US Senators, then you are in luck. You can see the increasingly hysterical submissions of all four of those valiant seekers after truth at the press conference mentioned above, with a lurking Menendez playing the eminence gris at their heels...