Category: The Dish

Jonah Goldberg, a member in good standing of the conservative elite, argues that Bush wasn’t personal enough in deciding what is and what isn’t justice:

Having just watched Joe Wilson sputter in pompous rage on the Today Show, I’m tempted to argue that Bush should have used eminent domain to take Wilson’s convertible Jaguar and give it to Scooter Libby.

And so the connected and the privileged go to bat for their friends among the connected and the privileged. The rule of law is for the little people. But all in good fun, of course. Jeez, don’t you have a sense of humor?

Matt Yglesias drools over the possibility of getting the entire country under the government’s healthcare thumb. Medicare is a particularly revealing program idea in this respect. At a deep level, the left sees all of us as the equivalent of senior citizens, dependent on the benevolence of government for our needs and wants. Of course, they will provide our needs as they see fit – they’re good people, you know. And so much smarter than the rest of us. There will be none of that wasteful drug spending we now have. How dare Americans spend their own money on treatments they actually want? It’s inefficient! This remains the key template for liberals: citizens as permanent supplicants. Those who do manage to look after themselves? Don’t worry. They’ll tax you till you really do need the equivalent of Medicare. And expect you to be grateful for it.

David Brooks’ column today can only be described as an embarrassment. More in the morning. It seems to me that Orin Kerr gets it right:

As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as "overwhelming" and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

Er, yes. But we know why they are claiming this absurdity. He’s their friend; and he’s critical to maintaining the line that no one rigged the case for war or risked criminal conduct to push back against a critic who believed it was. But the bottom line is a simple one, regardless of its origins. Is Libby a perjurer or not? He is. And Bush has nullified the sentence. To please a political constituency.  It is hard to think of an action more contemptuous of the rule of law – except for so many decisions made by this lawless president, acting as a monarch. De facto pardoning or commuting of a sentence was once a royal prerogative that even kings reserved for those they didn’t know, convicted clearly unjustly, whose sentence had often largely been served.  And yet Bush uses it in office for a friend, hours after the failure of his appeal, to protect his own political and legal liability for jeopardizing intelligence and compromising national security.

What more do we need to know? These people think they are above the law. This president thinks he is above the law. The vice-president believes he is above the law. And when democratic leaders act as if they are the law unto themselves, and are prepared to upend the justice system to serve their own political ends, it’s time for a revolt. Sorry, David. But this won’t be forgotten – ever. It’s a final straw, a call to wake up before these criminals get away with it one more time.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

The decision to display presidential contempt for the justice system was made "alone":

For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Under the circumstances, it’s clear that Cheney was involved. When there are no normal channels of governance in this White House, it means the fusion of Cheney-Bush acting as extra-legal agents of their own power. We really no longer have the rule of law operating. We have the privileges and lies and policies of two men. The law is no competitor. And shamelessness is their ally.

Provincetown, Massachusetts, 12.30 am.

They keep repeating the line that only the "left" will be angry. Dean Barnett hauls it out. Glenn Reynolds echoes. K-Lo is on the meme. Is it now the conservative position that only left-wingers actually object to people getting away with perjury? For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Republican base gives a damn about Scooter Libby. But many others now will. The defense of the commutation is complicated and unpersuasive. The case against it is simple: You don’t get a cleaner example of different justice for the rich and powerful. It seems to me that real conservatives – not the lawless hoodlums now parading under that banner – should be as outraged as anyone. This man risked national security for political payback, and perjured himself to cover it up. This commutation will rightly become a symbol of a great deal of rot in Washington that needs to be swept clean. Get out that broom.

More proof that he is the cipher for the same crew of perjurers and leakers. Now let’s see what Giuliani says. Mr former prosecutor, you want to let connected elite perjurers off the hook?

"I respect the jury’s verdict.  But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

That’s the president micromanaging the wheels of justice. Remember that Mr Bush is notoriously pardon-averse. He has only issued 113 pardons in nearly seven years. In Texas, he sent many, many people to the execution room, even those, like Karla Faye Tucker, who had genuinely expressed remorse and been born again. In fact, he famously mocked her petition for clemency. So she was killed. But Bush finds a way to spare his own apparatchik from mere months in jail for a clear case of perjury.

If this shores up his conservative base, then his conservative base has no principles. They impeached Clinton for the same crime. But they let their own go free. If you needed a reason to rid Washington of the president’s corrupt party, you just got one. Get angrier.

The latest poll from SurveyUSA:

Seven months before the newly accelerated and suddenly critical California Republican Primary, the contest re-stabilizes, with Rudolph Giuliani 13 points ahead of John McCain and Fred Thompson, who tie for 2nd place, according to a SurveyUSA poll of likely GOP Primary voters, conducted exclusively for KABC-TV Los Angeles, KPIX-TV San Francisco, and KGTV-TV San Diego. Giuliani’s 13-point advantage today is identical to his lead 60 days ago, in SurveyUSA’s May 2007 tracking poll, and a slight increase from the 7-point advantage Giuliani had in June. Fred Thompson, who went from 11 points in May to 21 points is June, has stopped climbing, and settles in at 19 points in July. Is this Thompson’s ceiling? Or has Thompson, whose official entry into the race may come at any moment, not yet begun to fight?

The next election begins:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years."

A great move by Obama. This has to be hung around every Republican’s neck. They are now the party of corruption, irresponsibility in national security, and perjury. The Republican party impeached the last president for perjury over sexual harassment. But they commute the sentence of a man who perjured himself in part because he leaked a national security secret. That tells you everything. They care more about their privileged friends than the rule of law. We now know that for sure.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)