The Travis County grand jury that indicted Texas governor Rick Perry Friday evening has lost New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, Obama confidant David Axelrod — and now even the editors of the New York Times. While the Times’s editors make sure to advertise their distaste for Perry — he is, they say, “one of the least thoughtful and most damaging state leaders in America” – they cannot deny that “bad political judgment is not necessarily a felony, and the indictment handed up against him on Friday – given the facts so far – appears to be the product of an overzealous prosecution.
From this morning’s staff editorial:
Mr. Perry should have left the matter [of Lehmberg’s resignation] to the courts, where both a criminal and a civil attempt to have her removed failed, or to the voters.
But his ill-advised veto still doesn’t seem to rise to the level of a criminal act. . . .
Governors and presidents threaten vetoes and engage in horse-trading all the time to get what they want, but for that kind of political activity to become criminal requires far more evidence than has been revealed in the Perry case so far.
Are there any prominent liberals out there who think this indictment was a good idea?