The Founders would be bemused at this, since — inconveniently for the Scooter-must-hang left — they included the pardon power in the Constitution. There it is in Article II, Section 2: The president “shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons.” They didn’t include a proviso that the power shall not extend to persons vilified by left-wing bloggers as the personification of “the case for war.”
That's from Rich Lowry, read the rest.

Then recall that aside from Clinton's pardoning of Marc Rich -- international fugative and Oil-for-Food scandal middleman -- and aside from his pardoning of Almon Braswell and Carlos Vignali (whom each paid $200,000 to Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, to push the cause), the former president pardoned Susan Rosenberg of the Weather Underground terrorist group.

Say what you want about Scooter Libby (he didn't "out" anyone, btw) but at least he wasn't complicit in murdering two police officers.

Clinton also pardoned 16 members of the Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN. But I don't recall Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or Harry Reid criticising the former president.

So, then, this all boils down to hypocrisy and politics as usual. (Throw in another dart for Bush's lack of courage to fully pardon Libby instead of a commution).

If George Washington can pardon Whiskey Rebellion insurrectionists and Andrew Johnson can pardon one of the guys who helped assassinate Abraham Lincoln (Dr. Samuel Mudd) and our democracy survive, then I think Bush can pardon Libby and our democracy survive.

Labels: commute, Libby, pardon

Christopher Hitchens comments in Slate the absurdity of jailing Scooter Libby for a victimless "crime" for a leak he actually never made:

If Scooter Libby goes to jail, it will be because he made a telephone call to Tim Russert and because Tim Russert has a different recollection of the conversation. Can this really be the case? And why is such a nugatory issue a legal matter in the first place?

Before savoring the full absurdity of the thing, please purge your mind of any preconceptions or confusions.

*Mr. Libby was not charged with breaking the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
Nobody was ever charged with breaking that law, designed to shield the names of covert agents. Indeed, the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, determined that the law had not been broken in the first place.

*The identity of the person who disclosed the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak—his name is Richard Armitage, incidentally—was known to those investigating the non-illegal leak before the full-dress inquiry began to grind its way through the system, incidentally imprisoning one reporter and consuming thousands of man hours of government time (and in time of war, at that).

*In the other two "counts" in the case, both involving conversations with reporters (Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time), Judge Reggie Walton threw out the Miller count while the jury found for Libby on the Cooper count.

*The call to Russert was not about Plame in any case; it was a complaint from the vice president's office about Chris Matthews, who was felt by some to have been overstressing the Jewish names associated with the removal of Saddam Hussein. Russert was called in his capacity as bureau chief; any chitchat about Wilson and Plame was secondary.

*The call was made after Robert Novak had put his fateful column (generated by Richard Armitage) on the wire, and after he had mentioned Plame's identity to Karl Rove.

Does it not seem extraordinary that a man can be prosecuted, and now be condemned to a long term of imprisonment, because of an alleged minor inconsistency of testimony in a case where it is admitted that there was no crime and no victim?
Yes, it does. Read the rest.

Labels: folly, justice department, Libby, PlameGate, Wilson

The case of Lewis Scooter Libby, aka PlameGate, has been one of the most surreal political events in recent memory, and without a doubt is proof positive that the mainstream media isn't just partisan, but basically just an extension of the Democratic Party.

The Bush administration is guilty of one thing in this: stupidity. Once again they are too stupid to make the right play in what should have been a very, very easy defense. As for the fall guy, Scooter Libby is guilty of lying about a leak he did not even make which was a supposed crime THAT NEVER EVEN OCCURED.

Valerie Plame was not a "covert" agent. Period. We know this for several reasons. First, they've never actually asserted it. They skirt around it and bait and switch - "covert" becomes "classified," (the latter a domain that like it or not the president of the United States has one hundred percent Constitutional authority over, yet the press chooses to ignore this). Second, the prosecution in the Libby case, lead by Patrick Fitzgerald, stated, "we have not made any allegation that Mr. [Scooter] Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent. We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion." In other words, given every opportunity to support his prosecution by formally announcing that Plame was covert, Fitzgerald chooses not to. Finally, were Plame truly a covert agent, as opposed to her identity only being classified, then there would have been charges filed against former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage -- the man who actually leaked her cover to the Chicago Tribune's Robert Novak. This fact was known by the Justice Department BEFORE they charged Libby but conveniently left out of the public's knowledge until it was separately reported in September 2006.

Democrats have followed suit of course. That Plame wasn't actually covert matters not to them. Who needs facts when you have the media repeating your exaggerations, half-truths and lies. There will be no investigation as to why someone as unqualified on WMD as Joe Wilson was appointed the role of investigating Iraq's Niger-uranium connection, nor how unprofessional it was for the CIA to allow nepotism to trump intelligence work. That Joe Wilson thrice lied to the Senate intelligence committee about how he was chosen for the job, what he found in Niger, and what Bush administration did with it matters not to the media. That a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, told Wilson that Iraq did attempt to purchase 400 tons of uranium in 1998 matters not to Nancy Pelosi. That this was exactly what the United Kingdom intelligence services shared with the Bush administration, and exactly what Bush stated in his 2003 state of the union speech is, for Democrats like John Murtha, insignificant. And that to this day the United Kingdom has never withdrawn its claim is, one supposes, just an inconvenient truth in the liberal surrealist world.

The Bush people had every reason to question Joe Wilson's partisanship during his so-called fact finding tour. That they have been inept in this defense underscores how important public speaking skills are when you're the president -- and how not having them can lead to approval ratings in the gutter.

Worst of all, that Joe Wilson and his wife can shamelessly play a victim card while simultaneously enjoying more limelight and free dinners from the Vanity Fair Elitist Left than they would have otherwise ever known in their life is absurd wrapped in asinine surrounded by crazy. "We're so the victim!" they scream as they enjoy night after night of well-paying public speaking engagements, a proposed multi-million dollar book deal, a planned Warner Brothers movie about them, and photo shoots for a variety of popular magazine covers. Cry me a river! Somebody, please, out me as a CIA agent!!! I'm begging ya!

To conclude, I leave you with the quote that best summarizes the sham that has been PlameGate, by Mark Steyn:

But nevertheless an anti-war deputy secretary [Armitage] of an anti-war department [State] leaking to an anti-war reporter [Novak] the name of an anti-war analyst [Plame] who got her anti-war husband [Wilson] a job with an anti-war agency [CIA] is supposedly an elaborate “conspiracy” by Cheney, Rove and the other warmongers.

Labels: Libby, PlameGate, Wilson