Category: The Dish

The latest bombshell from the royal court.

The DOJ standards don’t apply to Bush:

"Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence."

It’s good to be the king!

In case you’re not mad enough.

"Under Bush, some people are imprisoned forever without due process of law while others who receive due process of law and are found guilty are set free. Do I have that right?" – a commenter on TPM.

Yes, you have that right. And these discrepancies often happen in a monarchy where the elite is above the law and decide, based on their own interests, who is and is not subject to the criminal justice system. Paris Hilton did more time than Scooter Libby.

Get angrier.

I make no apologies for going cable on the Libby story. It’s about a presidency above the law, and contemptuous of the justice system. It’s about presidential defense of perjury. It’s about the murky run-up to the Iraq war, in which the key claims of the administration were subsequently revealed as false. If all that is not a big deal, what is?

Here’s a user-friendly guide to the Dish’s coverage these last twelve hours: Obama’s shrewd and swift response; the Bushies’ insta-spin; Fred Thompson’s Libby-love; Fitzgerald’s principled response; Americans’ revulsion; Clinton’s predictable quandary; Giuliani’s flip-flop on pardons; the Washington elite’s champagne parties; the president’s rank hypocrisy; and the one bright spot: Cheney’s fear.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

One aspect of the commutation of Libby’s sentence has been overlooked. Libby knows a very great deal about the war crimes of the president and vice-president and even more about the vagaries of the use of WMD intelligence before the war. By commuting his sentence, Bush is obviously trying to ensure that Libby doesn’t talk. He is making sure that there’s no pressure on Libby to cop a plea and give Fitzgerald more evidence of malfeasance in the White House. A reader explains:

The commutation of this felon’s sentence was not a result of arrogance or indifference to the notion of accountability. It was motivated by fear. Libby knows it all, and I mean the whole story. He could expose Bush, Chaney and Rumsfeld as war criminals, and destroy the careers of dozens of others in a matter of minutes. You can be sure that he was told at the outset that he would never see the inside of a jail. The court ruling that packed him off to the slammer immediately triggered the inevitable. It was just a matter of timing.

Another way of seeing this is: obstruction of justice. But, hey, he’s the king. According to Addington and Cheney, the president is the justice system.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

"Perhaps we should call this what it is: ‘amnesty.’"

"I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," – George W. Bush on why he signed death warrants for 152 inmates as governor of Texas.

The quote is from his own book, "A Charge To Keep." I think that’s a debate-ender, isn’t it?

A case of degeneracy:

The political press — the function of which was envisioned by the Founders to investigate and hold accountable the most politically powerful — now fulfill the exact oppose purpose in our country. They are slavishly protective of our highest political officials, and adversarial only to those who investigate, oppose and seek to hold those officials accountable… What kind of country do we expect to have when we have a ruling Washington class that believes that they and their fellow members of the Beltway elite constitute a separate class, one that resides above and beyond the law?

Whatever else it is, it isn’t a democracy dedicated to equal justice under the law.

The wealthy, connected, powerful coterie around Scooter Libby are reveling in their power to subvert the decision of a petty bunch of know-nothing jurors in favor of their best friend. Here they are, bursting into tears over Scooter’s reprieve:

The advisory committee of Libby’s trust is made up of developers, investors, publishers, think-tankers. There’s former senator Fred Thompson, the "Law & Order" star and Republican presidential aspirant — who even held a fundraiser for Libby at his McLean home, according to Carlson.

"While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the President’s decision," Thompson said yesterday in a statement. "This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life."

There are former Cabinet-level officials, including Ed Meese, Jack Kemp and Spencer Abraham. There is conservative thinker Bill Bennett and political philosopher Francis Fukuyama. There’s Ron Silver, of "West Wing" fame. There’s Mary Matalin, a former Cheney adviser, and Nina Rosenwald, chairwoman of the Middle East Media Research Institute. There is Steve Forbes, who knows a thing or two about writing checks.

They’ve raised $5 million in a defense fund. How many innocents on death row have been the object of such attention?