"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?
Marc Ambinder is following the Clintons around in Iowa. Photos here. Here’s Clinton’s latest pitch.
Remember that? It was the name of Bush’s campaign jet in 2000. Try not to laugh too hard. David Corn sees the wider lesson of Bush twisting the law to protect his friend and apparatchik:
Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House’s problem with the truth. After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence. And now the final act in the long-running CIA leak scandal–Bush’s commutation–stands as another symbol of this grand theme: lying doesn’t really bother this crowd. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush claimed he would bring responsibility to the White House and, as a PR stunt, he dubbed his campaign jet Accountability One. Yet with this commutation, he takes the position that in his administration an aide who purposefully misleads government officials investigating a possible national security crime need not be held fully accountable.
Giuliani’s turnabout on Libby is a fascinating moment in his own political evolution. A reader writes:
It was Giuliani’s office that prosecuted Marc Rich. Here’s Giuliani on Rich’s pardon:
Well, I’m shocked that the President of the United States would pardon him. After all, he never paid a price. He got on an airplane, took all his records, and ran off to Zug, Switzerland, where he’s remained a fugitive, and has made untold efforts to try to get the charges reduced, including many, many overtures and entreaties based on the use of influence.
Libby, of course, represented Marc Rich. There really is a different set of standards for the wealthy and connected isn’t there?
