• Hey! We're on Twitter!

  • Buy The Book!

  •  

     

    Click to Buy The Mug

    Buy The Book

Archive for January 25th, 2007

Law & Order: Treachery and Dirty Tricks Division

Posted by s.z. on January 25th, 2007

Wow, the Scooter trial has gone all “Law & Order” on us even faster than I thought it would!  As the NY Times headline writer put it, “At the Libby Trial, Hints of Intrigue and Betrayal.” For it seems that Scooter’s lawyers are claiming that “White House aides had sacrificed him to protect Karl Rove” and that said aides “deliberately set  … Mr. Libby up to be a scapegoat.” 

Of course, the defense hasn’t yet explained how these nefarious officials forced Scooter to lie to FBI and DOJ investigators, but I’m sure that will come out in day two or so.

As you may recall, in our L&O scenario, we had the character based on Scooter being shot in the court house before he could testify against Dick Cheney — but with real life giving us such a cracker jack opening scene, our plot seems too tame now.  And, given L&O’s recent penchant for ripping from at least two different headlines for each episode, our story probably isn’t complicated (or lurid) enough to get aired. 

So, your challenge is to come up with your own plot for “Law and Order” — you need to start out with the Plame case and trial of Scooter Libby. but then you need to mix in some other recent news item for that special L&O twist.  Here are a couple of examples.

1.  Scooter/Brittany Spears dropping her baby and later showing off her lack of undies.  Plotline: Somebody leaks the name of an undercover terrorism expert to the press, thus killing Jack Bauer and forcing everyone to sit through 24 hours of Jack’s funeral.  A senior White House Official lies to the intestigators about it, and is prosecuted.  But that case is crowded off the front page when a pop starlet feeds some hungry crocodiles while holding her baby, and accidentally drops it into a croc’s mouth.  And she isn’t wearing any panties. 

In a surprise legal move, Jack McCoy tries the two cases together.  When she takes the stand, the starlet reveals that her baby was fathered by Karl Rove’s, which is why Scooter was sacrificed — he was ordered to leak stuff about Plame and then lie about it to deflect attention from her pregnancy.  She takes a plea deal in exchange for her testimonty that she dropped the child on purpose, at Rove’s command, to get rid of the incriminating child.  The undies were stolen by Russian spies who wanted to bring the affair out into the open, but after one of them was poisoned by a plutonium pellet that the RNC slipped into his tea, the other one agrees to testify in exchange for Judith Regan’s old job at Harper-Collins.

2.  Scooter/ the case of those kidnapped boys found in Missouri, one who had been missing for four years

Plotline: During one of his radio segments, an obnoxious news personality based on Bill O’Reilly blows the cover of a CIA employee working in North Korea.  The agent is captured and killed only minutes before she was to bring out Kim’s secret nuclear strategy, so Bill is tried for treason, and executed.  Everybody at the D.A’s office is happy.  Even the defense seems glad.

But wait, there’s more!

It seems that the leak came from the White House, which offers up a senior advisor as a scapegoat.  He stays mum until, in an emotional scene in the last act, he testifies that Karl Rove kidnapped him 30 years ago, and he was not only psychologically unable to escape, he also had to do Karl’s dirty work, because he was so afraid of Karl, who used secret “Manchurian Candidate” brainwashing techniques on him.  The advisor claims that Karl is a North Korean mole.  Then Karl takes the stand, and says that he was only following the orders of his secret master, Reverend Moon.  He blurts out that his next assignment was to have been the murder of Tom Cruise for claiming to the new Jesus Christ.  It all ends with the revelation that George W. Bush, like LonelyGirl15, is just an actor following a script.  So, everybody wants their money back, and Jack McCoy files a class action suit on their behalf.

And so on. 

Now, make up your own scenarios.  Here are some recent headlines for you to work with. 

Duke prosecutor accused of hiding DNA evidence
Houston Chronicle - 51 minutes ago
By JOSEPH NEFF and BENJAMIN NIOLET. RALEIGH, NC – When embattled Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong took his seat at the defense table at the NC State Bar on Wednesday, the role-reversal became complete: The hunter is now the hunted.

Military Develops Non-Lethal Ray Gun
CBS News - 8 hours ago
(AP) The military’s new weapon is a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they will catch fire. The technology is supposed to be harmless – a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.

After decades, arrest made in slayings
Houston Chronicle - 34 minutes ago
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS and ALLEN G. BREED. AP. JACKSON, Miss. – For four decades, Thomas Moore dreamed of exacting revenge on the reputed Ku Klux Klansman he believed had kidnapped his younger brother and another teen, beaten them and drowned them in

Obama Rips Fox News Over Madrassa Story
Boston Channel.com - 7 hours ago
WASHINGTON — With a staffer declaring, “We will not be swift-boated,” Sen. Barack Obama fought back Wednesday against an allegation that he was educated at a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia.

Panama’s Noriega to be Released from US Prison in September
Voice of America - 9 hours ago
By Lisa Ferdinando. The defense attorney for Manuel Noriega says the former Panamanian dictator is to be released from a Miami prison in September.

 I bet you can come up with some great plots based on those stories (plus l’affaire Scooter).  Or, you can find your own headlines to rip from.  Just be creative!  Bonus points for killing off Districk Attorney Arthur Branch.