<p>President Bush has just commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence so that the Scooter will do NO time (what is Paris gonna say about that), but Scooter’s fine and probation remain in tact. </p>
<p>Not 100% sure I agree with this, but a rather thoughtful and somewhat clever determination by the President I think; especially since he seems to typically avoid any thought(ful) process.</p>
<p>Thank heavens that a convicted felon won’t have to suffer like Paris! Now he can get back to business, raking in the big bucks as a lobbyist for Guiliani Security Systems along with Bernie Kerik and Alan Placa.</p>
<p>Besides, what’s the political downside - that the President would sacrifice his poll numbers? Or that it would show the White House supports lawbreaking? Prisons are already overcrowded, and this is a good first step toward dealing with it.</p>
<p>He’s still receiving more punishment for lying about a non-criminal case than Sandy Berger did for stealing classified documents from the National Archives and hiding them under a construction trailer.</p>
<p>Ah, Sjmom - who is convinced that the republican-headed Justice Department, with full knowledge of the content of the copies of documents Berger took (the originals still being in the archives) dealt with the matter with pro-democrat bias. You gotta love the right wing blog-borg: no amount of reality can disturb the lockstep obedience of the echos!</p>
<p>Now, he’ll have real motivation to talk to Fitzgerald…after all, $250k hangs in the balance… (but I’ll bet the Republican talk-talk machine has already raised it.)</p>
<p>This is an example of partisan loss of moral compass. It’s okay to lie to an investigator if you don’t think the underlying crime is worthy of investigation. “Oh c’mon, it wasn’t that bad, Mom, even if it was against the rules.” Yeah, our judicial system and a jury of peers merely acted out of partisanship and went overboard. Mm hmmm. Oh, and never mind the fact that the Administration as a whole outed a covert CIA operative. Oh that’s right, just because she was in Langley a lot more often than living a James Bond kind of life means she wasn’t actually covert.</p>
<p>It depends. If Libby’s appeal successfully goes through (a commutation doesn’t absolve the guilt), then the pardon won’t be necessary. The appeals court ruled that he couldn’t stay free on appeal; it didn’t shoot it down (sorry, had to make a Dick Cheney reference). If Libby’s appeal doesn’t go through, then I assume el jefe will use the P-stamp for Libby.</p>
<p>Bush will never consider the Genarlo Wilson case. What has Wilson ever done for the Administration? He doesn’t know any secrets he could spill to the press. He doesn’t have powerful people on speed-dial. He never gave or collected hundreds of thousands of dollars to the party. He’s just a poor son-of-a-gun caught up in a miscarriage of justice. That’s not anything that disturbs this president’s notorious ‘peace of mind’ or ‘steadiness of purpose’.</p>
<p>What’s really so very sad is the way that the courts were used to criminalize politics. Fitzgerald went on a fishing expedition. There was no underlying crime. No one outed Plame. Fitzgerald determined rather early on in the investigation that notorious gossip Richard Armitage was the one who nonchalantly mentioned Plames’s position with the CIA and that there was no criminal act involved in his doing so, yet he foraged ahead. </p>
<p>Fitzgerald knew that all of the wailing on the left about the evil Bush White House trying to destroy Plame/Wilson was untrue, yet he insisted on going fishing anyway. Very sad…and the response of the Dems/liberals is all very predictable. Oh the horrors.</p>