Apparently perjury and obstruction of justice is worthy of impeachment but not 30 months in prison. That's the stance of President Bush, who decided that he's more important than the legal system, overruling a jury and a judge, eliminating the punishment given to former aide Scooter Libby, commuting Scooter's 30 month prison sentence. The conviction and fine stand (big deal) but Scooter no longer has any fear of going to jail.
What a joke. President Bush, defending his actions, wrote today that:
Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation.
As David Shuster pointed out on MSNBC tonight, the reason nobody was charged with violating the law was BECAUSE people like Scooter Libby were lying to prosecutors and preventing them from learning the truth.
And now, commuting Scooter's jail sentence, President Bush took away the only bargaining chip which was available to prosecutors to get to the bottom of whether or not any laws were broken. Facing a 30 month jail sentence, having exhausted his pre-detention appeals, if Scooter Libby would have ever been looking to cut a deal, now was going to be the time. He tells special prosecutor Peter Fitzgerald everything he knows, and he would have been spared jail. Now, we'll never know the truth, because there's no reason for Libby to roll over on anybody in the White House administration. He's already free.
As much as this is protecting a former aide, this is protecting President Bush and Vice President Cheney (and Karl Rove and others) from future liability. Must be nice to have that kind of power. I don't want to hear Republicans, ever again, talk about President Clinton and how perjury and obstruction of justice were impeachable offenses, because, as we all learned today, it's only worth $250,000.
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1 comments:
Scott, I'm posting here because Typepad is down and I feel like saying something about this.
What I don't understand about the chorus of approval from the Republican House and Senate Members is this, are they now saying that they are endorsing letting Libby pass on this one because he's taking the bullet for the Vice President, because you know that the moment the Democract takes office in 2008 (which is assured now due to this) all the artificial wraps will come off all these files and there will be actionable evidence there that will implicate him.
Now, I know that a lot of the outlying blogs talk about the Bush family buying land in Paraguay and, well, Cheney is mostly machine at this point so he probably won't die, but there has to be an effort to indict and inprison everyone from Turdblossom to Berto and everyone in between.
The problem with the Nixon leftovers is that they weren't locked away or hanged for treason (in my wettest of dreams) for their crimes, and they all burrowed back out from their caves and continued to wreak havoc.
Have I made myself clear?
Thing is, these particular Democrats have no guts for the kind of fight, evidently, and I think some more aggressive House members have to be sought out and quickly.
Not much time left. They need money, too. But we should definitely run another Dem in every district where that Dem Congressman caved to the administration.
The candidate's gotta have the nerve to make decisions that might be seen as unpopular for the greater good, and have to do what's right for the country, not one's political career.
Okay, I'm done.
Thanks, Scott.
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