Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

You just posted an email from a lawyer reader that detailed his experience with Bush’s commutation standards.  He noted the three conditions that must be met (according to Gonzo) before Bush would consider commutation.  The third condition was ‘that the President would not act on any request for commutation until all judicial avenues in the case had been exhausted.’  You opined that the third condition had been met.  That is incorrect.  Libby has not exhausted all of his legal avenues.

The D.C. Circuit only ruled on his request to stay the sentence pending appeal, it did not rule on the merits of the appeal (though they did say that they saw no substantial legal issue).  Accordingly, Libby had not met any of the three conditions set forth by Gonzo.

Please do justice to this injustice and note that Libby received such special treatment that he did not have to meet any of the three conditions.

Duly noted. Get angrier.

An interesting email from a lawyer who once tried to get a commutation for a client facing the death penalty. He got nowhere, of course. From a law-blog:

On March 2003, for the first and only time in my life, I went to the West Wing of the White House. At that time, I was representing a man who was scheduled to be executed by the federal government in less than three weeks. I had filed a request for commutation, asking the President to commute the death sentence to a sentence of life without the possibility of release. Department of Justice rules require that such a request be filed with the Office of the Pardon Attorney in DOJ. Although I had filed the request in December, we had not yet received any response.

While the commutation request was pending, I asked then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales if he would meet with me to discuss the case. (I knew that the White House Counsel was ultimately responsible for making a recommendation to the President on my request.) To my great surprise, he agreed and invited me to a meeting in his office. We met for over an hour. I was allowed to present my argument in some detail, and I answered many questions from Judge Gonzales. I was quite impressed that Judge Gonzales had obviously read my written submissions and had already given the case some thought.

Judge Gonzales told me three things about President Bush’s policy in considering requests for commutation. First, that President Bush would not consider commutation if he believed that the case had already received full and fair consideration by the jury and the courts who heard the case. Second, that the President would not consider the request until he had a recommendation from the Department of Justice. Finally, he said that the President would not act on any request for commutation until all judicial avenues in the case had been exhausted.

Well, the third condition had been met for Libby. But not the other two. More evidence that this president uses his powers not to advance justice but to perpetrate a double standard of justice for his friends and lackeys. And to protect himself from scrutiny.

"Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco. … The bodies of chemical-infested, brain-dead liberal deniers continue to stack up like cordwood. … The 1960s, a generation that wanted to hold hands, give peace a chance, smoke dope and change the world, changed it all right: for the worse. America is still suffering the horrible consequences of hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect," – Ted Nugent, in the WSJ. Mark Kleiman giggles here. Eric Cartman was unavailable for comment.

I should probably celebrate but I have too much blogging to do. Of course, I could go to a meeting. Or join CLAWS:

CLAWS (Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery) was founded by D.J. Swanson in the late 1990s to bring together people who just weren’t that interested in a career. They prefer the term "job-free" to "unemployed," which has too many negative connotations, according to the founder.

Obama goes there at a union event in Iowa. That’s a big deal, it seems to me. Obama isn’t pandering.

A reader writes:

A question for the people who think Libby should have either been pardoned or think it is ok to have his sentence commuted: was Clinton wrong for not commuting Susan McDougal’s sentence? She went to jail to protect the Clintons in a "witch hunt" in which no underlying crime was found. Will these supporters criticize Clinton for not commuting Susan McDougal’s sentence?

Comparing Clinton’s pardons to the Libby issue is disingenuous. But the McDougal case is a direct comparison. The Republican party should be ashamed of itself that it can’t raise itself to a moral standard higher than Clinton.

A Kantian tackles Ron Paul’s constitutionalism. Not for the faint of heart.

Soren Dayton detects evidence that the Dobsonites have begun to wash their hands of the Mormon and warm up to the Tennesseean. More here. Hugh Hewitt, call your office.

Each other, that is. Here’s a blistering assault on Richard Dawkins from a fellow non-believer, David Sloan Wilson:

Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.

Ouch. A Science Blogs discussion thread on the piece is here.