Maybe he’s finally waking up to just how craven his political opponents really are. Or maybe he’s just trying to appease the base. You decide:
President George W. Bush on Tuesday refused to rule out a pardon for former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a day after sparing him from prison in a case that helped seal his Iraq legacy and gave ammunition to Democrats.
Bush, who angered Democrats but reassured conservatives by saving Libby from serving a 2-1/2 year prison sentence, told reporters who asked about an eventual full pardon for Libby: “As to the future I rule nothing in and nothing out.”
[…]
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and prospective candidate Fred Thompson of Tennessee issued statements of support. Others were more circumspect, and Arizona Sen. John McCain was conspicuously silent on the issue.
The Bush decision appealed to the conservative base that can be key to Republican presidential primary elections. It could be more problematic for Republicans in the general-election campaign, in which candidates typically move toward the center.
True, it “could be more problematic.”
But as I argued a few days back, I don’t think that it necessarily has to be so — and in fact, I think someone like Thompson or Giuliani could readily explain, in clear terms, how this prosecution took on a decidedly partisan turn, and was decided by a jury who admitted it was looking for some way to punish somebody over Iraq.
The verdict boiled down to a jury accepting a reporter’s word over the word of a relative unknown tied to Darth Cheney. Doing so necessitated a finding of perjury, which in turn necessitated a finding of obstruction — both of which are now cited as proof of the initial crime, which still boils down to competing memories, and which, as it relates to the ostensible gist of the investigation, was being needlessly pursued by a special prosecutor who’d already uncovered what he was charged with finding and knew that the animating leak by Armitage didn’t rise to the level of a crime.
Many at the White House found criticism from New York Sen. Hillary Clinton particularly ironic. Aside from the Rich pardon, her husband’s former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, reached a plea deal in 2005 and avoided a jail sentence for illegally removing classified documents from the National Archives and destroying some of them.
And worse, he voluntarily surrendered his law license to avoid having to testify on the matter.
And yet Joe Wilson and his progressive enablers continue to pretend that it is to the White House we should be looking for signs of a coverup?
Tell me: is this simple misdirection? Or has the delusion become so institutionalized that it now acts as the skeletal structure for an alternate reality of the kind quantum physicists generally try to explain using experiments with light travel and cats in boxes?
“But as I argued a few days back, I don’t think that it necessarily has to be so  and in fact, I think someone like Thompson or Giuliani could readily explain, in clear terms, how this prosecution took on a decidedly partisan turn, and was decided by a jury who admitted it was looking for some way to punish somebody over Iraq.”
If only. The fact of the matter is very few Republicans have proven they have the stones to come out and state the obvious. Progressives vomit the most vile invective on a regular basis and their politicians lap it up and regurgitate it in slightly less odious terms. The current crop of Republicans have not proven they can fight back so my bet is they’ll bend over and take the MSM ass raping over this without a) correcting the lies and b) defending the truth.
he wasn’t convicted of outing a covert agent
the constitution gives the president the right to commute sentences or pardon crimes.
“Let the mad dogs howl.”
Mao authorized the Cultural Revolution to change reality of Great Leap Forward — another delusion without caged cats and physics for your asking.
Your military in Iraq seeing victory, yet your press dismiss accounts to plant another reality in peoples’ minds.
These truths I have lived . . . right opportunist, bah! Be aware of your enemy’s techniques and watch them accelerate as in quantum physics. These actions by your side must responded to — or lose future and possibly factual history.
Jeff, you should take some prose lessons from Peng.
I would say misdirection – in fact, it almost seems pro forma and rote. The proponents (ie. Jesse Jackson Jr. calling for impeachment – hey, ever look at the Constitution, Jr.?) don’t even sound all that whipped up. Maybe they are smart enough not to give the Republican base something to react to…
Peng IS good….
As you mentioned in the other thread Jeff, a presidential candidate that stands up and talks back to the “progressives” on this and other garbage talking points without surrendering the argument to false analogies and untruths will garner your vote as well as I suspect many other independents.
If anything I think most people are just tired of this lying backstabbing bullshit and want a candidate that doesn’t apologize for their actions.
I mean, the ridiculousness of this whole Libby affair in comparison to Sandy Hamburglers actions just shows you that Bush never fought back or stood up to these dopes. It reminds me of the following from PJ O’Rourke, “Putting Words in the President’s Mouth
Sixteen obvious points that George W. Bush should make during the Wednesday night debate.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/770chlec.asp
It’s sad and funny at the same time, because Bush could’ve said most of these and no one could have argued with him.
Instead he just sits there and takes it. What a shame.
Hillary is just pissed that Baby Hughie didn’t get a cut.
http://tinyurl.com/2howq5
Tman – I never tire of reading PJ O’Rourke. Thanks !
O’Rourke / Peng 2008?
O’Rourke / Peng 2008?
Nah, Fred!/Jeff! 2008… Can you imagine the ‘dillo as secdef?
Jeff, you ever read any ? what do you think of the guy? You might like some of his views on detainees.
oops. links were messed up. i mean to ask about orin kerr. and link to his views on Libby mainly.
I posted this somewhere else. Bash away
I have this take on Bush’s choice between commuting the prison sentence and an outright pardon. An outright pardon puts an absolute, complete end to any appeals. They don’t do moot court in real life. Libby would have no chance to clear himself. He would always be the guilty guy who got pardoned. Commuting the jail sentence so he doesn’t have to go inside but leaving the rest keeps the appeal process alive. Remember, his appeals weren’t denied. All that was denied was that he remain out until they were complete. Not unusual at all. The legal assumption is that you are guilty once convicted. Sentence begins, appeals are pursued. In this case, his sentence would certainly be complete before he could complete his appeals. I sincerely doubt there would have been this action if the judge had let him remain free until the end of the appeals process. A not unheard of ruling in cases like this.
Secondly, I believe Libby was railroaded and that there was serious juror misconduct. Point one, he was not allowed to enter any testimony from a memory expert. During the investigation he was asked how he found out that Plame was CIA. He recalled that it was Russert in a conversation OVER A YEAR PREVIOUS. I’m telling you all right now that if you are ever exposed to this kind of thing preface every single thing you say with, “To the best of my recollection.” If not a flat out, “I don’t remember.” I am surprised that all you amateur lawyers think this kind of thing is cool. Can any of you recall a conversation you had last year? Any particular one you had on April 3, 2006? Of course not. You can argue “but this was tremendously important, of course I would remember.” But that is ludicrous considering who he was and what he did. Every conversation he had with anybody was critically important. More important than any conversation any of you have ever had in your lives. Well, almost any. But those with a brain will get the idea. The standard of perfect recall he was held to is heinous in its draconian enforcement.
As to juror misconduct, I believe three jurors interviewed after the trial expressed disgust and an idea that this was the Bush administration on trial. Cheney, Rove, Bush, the triumvirate from hell were cited several times. Unfortunately, they weren’t on trial. This poor schmuck with less than perfect recall was.
And finally, ask yourselves this. What possible motivation could he have for covering up a non-crime? Not committed by him? Or anyone else he knew about? Fitzgerald knew who told Novak the first day, it was Armitage. Why did he continue? He got the answer. He kept trolling until he found somebody with a faulty memory he could cornhole.
There’s also this:
Quote:
As it happens, Messrs. Fitzgerald and Libby had crossed legal paths before. Before he joined the Bush Administration, Mr. Libby had, for a number of years in the 1980s and 1990s, been a lawyer for Marc Rich. Mr. Rich is the oil trader and financier who fled to Switzerland in 1983, just ahead of his indictment for tax-evasion by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bill Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich in 2001, and so the feds never did get their man. The pardon so infuriated Justice lawyers who had worked on the case that the Southern District promptly launched an investigation into whether the pardon had been “proper.” One former prosecutor we spoke to described the Rich case as “the single most rancorous case in the history of the Southern District.”
Two of the prosecutors who worked on the Rich case over the years were none other than Mr. Fitzgerald and James Comey, who while Deputy Attorney General appointed Mr. Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak.
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/01/the_pending_mar.html
Was it a grudge against a Clinton pardon that led Fitzgerald to make this the only indictment in the non-scandal that was the non-outing of Valerie “everybody knew” Plame? When you actually look at the case, kiddies, I’m surprised you all are not outraged at this. Then again, maybe I’m not. BDS lives!
The last few lines are not for you obviously humans.
Commandero?
PERFECT
I think Bush is leaving the pardon door open in the hope that Keith Olb. will have an apoplectic fit on air
Jeff, looks like you are big enough to be attracting international prOn spamming – w00t!
I was going to post about how I think Bush commuted Libby’s sentence just so that he could prepare his appeal without having to sit in Jail. It makes it easier on him. If Libby loses his appeal, Bush will pardon him. I don’t think it likely that Libby will lose his appeal, but then I didn’t think he’s get convicted. And I was wrong.
But now I’m headed off to waste my 4th watching foreign porn.
Yes, shine, I read — and often link — Orin Kerr. As I recall, I’ve agreed with him on a number of issues and disagreed with him on more than a few, though I can’t remember specifics.
Again, I’m not a lawyer, so sometimes my disagreements with him may simply arise out of what he believes is a necessity follow a particular procedural path toward reaching a ruling; I tend toward that view myself, but I find, generally speaking, that conservative justices are often constrained by their own conservatism, and that because of the deference they give prior established law — good OR bad law — they are often unable to rule in a way that they believe appropriate to the case, but rather instead rule in a way appropriate to the trappings of precedent, etc.
This is, of course, a very generalized observation, one that I’m not even sure is sound, but it’s one I have been making with the expectation that someone will come along and show me the error of my ways. There is a difference, in short, between conservative justices and what are sometimes termed “activist” conservative justices — a designation often give Thomas and Scalia.
I think Thomas best fits what those who use the label mean — which doesn’t mean that I agree with their characterization of him as an “activist.”
I prefer to think of him as judicial idealist who thinks there’s nothing wrong with stripping away bad law and precedent simply because it has long been observed and defended.
If that makes any sense.
“I prefer to think of him as judicial idealist who thinks there’s nothing wrong with stripping away bad law and precedent simply because it has long been observed and defended.”
What does that have to do with his views on Libby? In this case, he just seems to have completely different view of the facts than you. Got nothing to do with how tame of a conservative he is.
I am neutral on Bush’s commutation of Libby’s prison sentence. It’s a political prerogative, and I think it’s pretty obvious he’s tossing a lifeline to a crony. However, a pardon would be outrageous. Bush would essentially be putting himself ahead of the justice system of jury and judge, rendering them irrelevant. Let the appeals process run its course. I am beyond tired of this chapass administration crashing into places where it has no intuitive business, and making the damn rules up as it blunders along.
but the law is the law. libby needs to pay his time for his illegal actions. just like the illegal aliens who broke the law to get here did. I’m sure jeff agrees. of course i think this is stupid, but then I’m not the one italicizing illegal everytime I try to draw a difference between legal and illegal immigration.
cynn – Aren’t presidential pardons and commutations, in fact, part of the process?
Oh, and former Pres. Clinton, in full parrot mode of the talking points du jour, was jaw dropping in its audacity.
The extent to which people see the world through ideology-covered glasses is probably the most depressing thing in the world. In the sense that it is unlikely that you will ever have a time where people can even agree on a large scale upon the facts themselves, not to mention meaning or motive.
There is an objective reality. The farther your decision-making process takes you from it, the more damage you do.
Can someone answer a question for me? Did Libby’s grand jury and trial jury know that someone had taken responsibility for leaking to Novak, and that the special prosecutor had no intention of charging that person (presumably because no law had been broken)? Because if the special prosecutor kept that information, he simply prejudiced the juries who are operating under the assumption that there is an actual pursuit of justice that’s being obstructed. I don’t see why he can’t eventually get off claiming entrapment.
I mean, say a friend of yours is arrested for a murder that occurred last year. You went to the movies with your friend during the week the murder victim went missing. When questioned by police you say your pretty sure it happened on a Wednesday. the police tell you that if you’re lying you will be charged with aiding and abetting murder. But as it turns out, the prosecutor has discovered that the alleged murder victim, who was missing, is actually quite alive, living a quiet life in Naples, Florida. Unknown to you, your friend is released.
The police question you again sometime later and you tell them that you went to the movies with your friend on the Tuesday of the week of the murder. The police claim you are lying because during your last questioning you said it had been Wednesday. The prosecutor then puts you on trial for aiding and abetting murder. The jury has also not been informed that their has actually been no murder. They convict you and you’re sentenced to thirty months in prison.
I mean, would that be just?
yours/
peter.
“People” already understand. They understand that Bush gave Libby special treatment that he wouldn’t have given anyone else. They understand that Libby committed perjury to keep the investigation away from Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. They also understand Bush’s tough guy statements about dealing with leakers in response to the Novak article. They understand that the prosecutor was a Republican appointee. They understand that a jury of people like them found Libby guilty, that the judge who sentenced Libby was a Bush appointee. They also understand that there was never a chance that Libby would spend a day in jail.
In relation to all that, the Libby commutation will be one more nail in the Republican coffin for 2008. In particular, it will be one more reason why voters think they don’t like Republicans. And who can blame them?
“People” also understand that what they got by ousting the Republicans in 2006 was change, but not for the better.
“They understand that Libby committed perjury to keep the investigation away from Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.”
People keep saying this, but no one ever explains how. Is this just one of those things everybody knows?
B Moe – it’s kind of like “selected not elected.” It doesn’t matter if it happened, it’s just a “polite fiction” that allows Democrats to have a reason to exist.
From what I understand, Libby lied under oath in an attempt to deflect responsibility. I’ll give you the crime is petty. I’ll double-down on the –it mneans Cheney calls the shots bet –.
Yeah, sorry about the last confusing comment. Cheney calls the shots.
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