I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison."
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disputed the president's assertion that the prison term was excessive. Libby was sentenced under the same laws as other criminals, Fitzgerald said. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals," the prosecutor said.
Guess Cheney were fearful of what Libby might reveal if he actually went to jail and wrote his memoirs!
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Bill Maher
What Was the Downside?
Posted July 3, 2007 08:21 AM (EST)
Besides the obvious -- that you can't, as the president claimed, honor the verdict of the jury and then basically overturn it -- what was the downside for him? The twenty-something percentage of people who still back him probably know Scooter Libby, most of them socially, and appreciate his pardon; and the rest of the country probably has never heard of Scooter Libby. This is not a country that pays attention to anything complicated, and even has a hard time with the simple. Outside of the bloggers, it's not something that will upset Joe Sixpack.
And speaking of bloggers, may I take this moment to thank the bloggers and columnists who pointed out that what I said about Dick Cheney earlier this year was in no way parallel to what Ann Coulter said about John Edwards. Gosh, sometimes it seems like the far right just lies blatantly and on purpose. Which brings us back to Scooter Libby...
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By Paul Begalla
George W. Bush is One Tough Hombre
Posted July 2, 2007 08:30 PM (EST)
Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker -- and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial -- and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband -- after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, "Betty Lou ain't a threat to no one she ain't married to." No dice
Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial.
But if you're rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. As George W. Bush demonstrated in giving Scooter Libby a Get Out of Jail Free Card, he is only compassionate to conservatives.
What does it say about America in the age of Bush when Judith Miller spends more time in jail over the Valerie Plame smear than Scooter Libby?
One thing it says is that Mr. Bush and his partner in crime, Dick Cheney, believe they are above the law. The commutation of Libby confirms the belief that Mr. Libby lied to the FBI, perjured himself to the grand jury, and obstructed a federal criminal investigation in order to cover up the role Bush and Cheney played in smearing Joe Wilson and ruining the career of his CIA operative wife.
The arrogance of the act is astounding. In commuting Libby's sentence, Mr. Bush did not follow his own Justice Department's guidelines, which do not recommend commutations unless the convict has begun serving his or her sentence, and has dropped or exhausted all appeals. Of course, Mr. Bush is free to disregard those guidelines, as President Clinton did when he pardoned Marc Rich. The Rich pardon was wrong, in my opinion. But Marc Rich was a fugitive financier; Clinton did not benefit at all from Rich's crimes. Scooter Libby is a Bush-Cheney operative who may well have been doing Bush and Cheney's bidding when he obstructed the investigation into how and Valerie and Joe Wilson were smeared. (By the way, like many Democrats I spoke out publicly against the Rich pardon -- which Scooter Libby helped to arrange. Let's see how many Republicans have the character to speak out against this injustice.)
It's interesting that we still have the capacity to be shocked by the extra-legal acts of this crowd. They came to power by stealing an election, by staging a near-riot to stop the counting of ballots in Miami, and by virtue of a Supreme Court edict that has joined Dred Scott in the judicial hall of shame. From that day to this Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have held the rule of law in contempt.
And we still have 567 days to go.
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Monday, July 02, 2007
Fred Thompson's Joyous Response
Here's former Senator and maybe, kinda, sorta Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson barely able to contain his glee over George W. Bush letting Scooter Libby off the hook for perjury and obstruction of justice."I am very happy for Scooter Libby. I know that this is a great relief to him, his wife and children," said Thompson. "While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the president’s decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life."I guess that's a "good American" except for the part where he lies and betrays the trust of the American people.
posted by Bob Geiger at 7/02/2007 09:15:00 PM
Democratic Candidates React To Libby Commutation
The worst president in American history just hours ago revoked the prison sentence of Scooter Libby and, for all intents and purposes, pardoned him on obstruction of justice and perjury charges in the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.Here's some rapid response from Democratic presidential candidates:
Senator John Edwards "Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.
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Arianna Huffington
The Upside of Flaming Cars: Politicians and the Press Exploit the British Terror Attacks
In the wake of the failed car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, tens of thousands of Brits donned their stiff upper lips on Sunday and took in a concert at Wembley stadium in honor of Princess Diana
In Washington, opportunistic politicians donned their curled lips and went on the Sunday shows to use the attacks as an excuse to allow the president a freer hand to spy on the American people.
First up we had Joe Lieberman, appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Lieberman established that he is not only independent of any political party but, increasingly, of reality itself by claiming that "the surge is working" in Iraq (must be all those playgrounds and soccer stadiums). And he made his case that the smoking Mercedes in London and the flaming Jeep Cherokee, apparently driven by a Jordanian physician, aimed at the Glasgow airport are a justification for more warrantless wiretaps here at home. "I hope these terrorist attacks in London wake us up here in America to stop the petty partisan fighting going on about...electronic surveillance," he said. "We're at a partisan gridlock over the question of whether the American government can listen into conversations or follow email trails of non-American citizens."
Of course, as Lieberman must know, the "gridlock" in Congress is not over whether the administration should be able to listen in, but over whether it should be able to listen in without following the law. Plus, the NSA program covered spying on U.S. citizens, not just "non-Americans." But why worry about facts when there's a fallacious point to be made?
Also making the pitch for an unfettered president, free to eavesdrop on whomever he wants, whenever he wants, was Rep. Peter King, ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, King said that the failed British attacks show that the best way to fight "the war on terrorism" is "to not allow people to cut into electronic surveillance, to stop that, to not be tying the hands of the president, neither here or in foreign policy."
The thinking of people like Lieberman and King (to say nothing of Bush and Cheney), when it comes to terrorism is as illogical as it is entrenched. It goes something like this: When someone attacks -- or tries to attack -- us or one of our allies because we are a free society, we should respond by making ourselves less free. That'll show the bastards!
This is not in any way to suggest that we shouldn't take terrorist threats seriously -- or that there aren't a lot of very dangerous people intent on carrying out attacks against us or our allies. But surely the answer isn't allowing Bush and Cheney to shred the Constitution -- and to continue making the spurious connection between Iraq and the war on terror. As Gordon Brown told the BBC on Sunday, "We are in the business of dealing with a long-term threat, a sustained threat that is unrelated in detail to one specific point of conflict in the world."
The key is to stay vigilant, but also to keep acts like those in Great Britain in perspective. For the moment, both the British and the White House seem to be doing a fairly good job of that. The administration hasn't jacked up our terror alert level and Bush is moving ahead with his vacation visit with Vladimir Putin in Kennebunkport.
The press has been a different story -- it's latched on to the London and Glasgow attacks with the usual red alert ardor. As former CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson put it: "My main beef remains that much of the cable news media reacts to this nonsense like a fifty year old guy on Viagra or Cialis -- they pop major wood. And the same warnings are appropriate--an erection lasting more than four hours may be harmful."
Take Tim Russert, whose interview with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was about as priapic a display as you're ever likely to see outside of a porno, with Russert desperately trying to get Chertoff to crank up the panic meter.
"Will we increase the number of air marshals on flights to Britain and Scotland?" he asked. "Is there any chatter that you can detect regarding terrorism in the United States during this holiday period?" "Will we raise our threat level?" "Considering the simplicity of putting together a suicide bomb by using an automobile, are you surprised that the United States has not been hit harder by this kind of device?" You could almost hear the blood rushing to his loins -- and the palpable sense of deflation when Chertoff refused to take the bait.
When his heavy breathing subsided, Russert turned his attention to the flaming Cherokee/warrantless wiretapping connection (which could turn out to be this summer's Iraq-9/11 link). He opened his interview with Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy by asking, "As you well know, you have issued subpoenas on the Bush White House regarding the eavesdropping, wiretapping put in place by the president after September 11th. Critics this morning will say, Senator, that this plan is so essential to monitoring contacts between international terrorists and people here in the United States that subpoenas now is very, very counterproductive and could affect our anti-terrorism situation."
Russert didn't specify which "critics" these might be. Critics of the rule of law? Critics of the Constitution? Critics of our Founding Fathers? Is it possible for an informed person to honestly misread the standoff between the Senate and the White House over the NSA spying program that badly?
When it comes to the threat of terrorism, it seems that if the government isn't trying to scare us to death, the press is. The exploitation of fear continues to be our leaders' and our media's ace in the hole -- for votes, for ratings, for curtailing our freedoms.
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