OK, maybe not free, but I doubt he'll have to pay a penny, what with his fat defense fund. Nope, ol' Scoot will probably be better in the long run financially, as a conviction that has been somewhat voided is particularly good cred in conservative circles. Think Ollie North or Tom DeLay as commentators on FOX "News."
As you can imagine, the news of President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail sentence burns me a little. Hell, it pisses me off. But we expected something like this. What weirds me out is this: I read the commutation idea on FreeRepublic.com a couple of weeks ago. Is W a Freeper? It certainly would explain a lot. Tony Snow, for example, who was a poster there as well.
I'm afraid what gets lost in the story is just how serious Scooter Libby's crime was. He obstructed justice and lied to a grand jury regarding the case of Valerie Wilson's cover being blown. Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA agent, covering matters of nuclear proliferation in the middle east. Ms. Wilson worked for a CIA front company, Brewster Jennings, which housed other agents. Ms. Wilson, all of her coworkers and all of their contacts (and families) were put at risk, and all of their work made worthless by the revelation of her identity. During a time of war.
I don't CARE what the order was of the leakage. It doesn't matter one small bit if it was Cheney, Armitage, Rove, Libby, Novak, Miller. . . The fact is, Libby helped obscure the facts to cover for somebody. If this had happened during the Cold War, he'd have suffered the fate of the Rosenburgs. And three years in jail is EXCESSIVE?
Republicans are jubilant. This is a mind-set I just can't understand. They are celebrating the escape of a convicted obstructionist/liar from the rule of law? Are you kidding me, man? If this were Al Gore's Chief of Staff, would they be so thrilled? Have we really gotten so partisan that we overlook what amounts to TREASON, as long as it's our guy?
John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has some great links about the reaction of prominent politicians and pundits on the commutation. Please take a look:
Reactions to Bush pardoning Scooter (let's face it, a pardon by another name...)
I am not jubilant at the Scooter pardon primarily because he reeks like a bag of bat guano and, if I was the Vespa in the picture I think I would be pissed. As a general response to the blog I offer the following:
ReplyDeletehttp://archives.cnn.com/2001/
ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/20/
clinton.pardon/index.html
Lesto, you're absolutely right regarding Clinton's pardons, but only up to a point. He got some buddies (and family) off--self admittedly--because he could. Bush in this instance effectively pardoned not only a friend, but somebody who could implicate BUSH himself. Beyond that, Scooter may have been told by Bush (or with Bush's knowledge) to do what he did.
ReplyDeleteTHAT, is what makes it especially egregious to me. Clinton's pardons? Bullshit. Bush Sr.'s too. But as I like to say, it doesn't matter if Clinton liked to boil live puppies and feed them to the Whitehouse staff for dinner: it doesn't make it automatically all right for Bush to do so. Right?