Perry Indictment Is 'B.S.', 'Unbelievably Ridiculous', 'Beyond the Pale', 'Dangerous' Say... More Liberals?

In response to Republicans rally to Perry’s defense:

I’m having fun tracking the responses from honest liberals who are quick to point out that while they’re not fans of Governor Perry – they are appalled by this nakedly political indictment.

Today’s line-up includes  Jonathan Chait, Joe Trippi, Alan Dershowitz, Olivia Nuzzi, Mia Farrow, and Texans for Public Justice (by way of a ginormous Freudian slip.)

“Lefty leftist” Jonathan Chait wrote a post entitled, This Indictment Of Rick Perry Is Unbelievably Ridiculous:

They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting — which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question — make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.

The theory behind the indictment is flexible enough that almost any kind of political conflict could be defined as a “misuse” of power or “coercion” of one’s opponents. To describe the indictment as “frivolous” gives it far more credence than it deserves. Perry may not be much smarter than a ham sandwich, but he is exactly as guilty as one.

Democrat strategist Joe Trippi on Fox News, Saturday night told Judge Jeanine Pirro that the indictment of Perry is  “way beyond the pale” and that it “reeks of politics all the way around.”

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz:

“This is another example of the criminalization of party differences,” said Dershowitz, a prominent scholar on United States constitutional law and criminal law who writes the “Legally Speaking” column for Newsmax. “This idea of an indictment is an extremely dangerous trend in America, whether directed at [former House Majority Leader] Tom DeLay or [former President] Bill Clinton.”

Further, Dershowitz said, such indictments are something that’s done in totalitarian countries and should not be done in the United States.

Former Anthony Weiner intern, now Daily Beast contributor, Olivia Nuzzi: 

Twitchy captured a Mia Farrow Tweet that was later deleted. She said, “I’m no Rick Perry fan but the indictment doesn’t identify a law he violated. Looks like politics not felony.”

And then there’s Texans For Public Justice – the left-leaning group that got the indictment ball rolling.