President Bush, in a move that galls even though it was 100% guaranteed to happen, commuted Scooter Libby's sentence today.
Saying that he respected the jury's verdict even while he was pissing on it, Bush made Scooter's jail term go away, while leaving the fine and the probation part of the sentence in tact. He called the sentence "excessive."
Which is interesting, because last month the Supreme Court upheld a decision supporting a 33-month sentence for a man who had served many years in the military, but who had been, like Libby, convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury.
Libby had been sentenced to 30 months.
11 comments:
This is so chicken shit, that I don't even have a snarky comment. How would Bush know what an "excessive" sentence is? ...like he even knows the first thing about law.
errr... I meant a BIT gleeful.
'Cause I'm not a BIG gleeful.
I was stunned-- I don't know what it is, but something in me thought he'd at least have the sense and decency to wait to do it the last minute before he left office in January of '09.
Can you imagine if this had happened-- a CIA agent being outed in retaliation for her husband not toeing the White House's line-- while Clinton was President? The Congress (then Republican-controlled) would have had a special midnight session that night to impeach and convict him.
Grant, Wrong holiday.
Ditto, Jyen - it just goes to show that the man has no decency whatsoever to not wait until the door hits his ass on the way out.
He said he felt the sentence was excessive. So why not just reduce jail time?
NPR:
President Bush's decision to commute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence proves that "this administration is corrupt to the core," said Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the former diplomat whose wife was at the center of the CIA leak investigation that sparked the Libby case.
In denouncing the Bush administration, Wilson told NPR, "I would only hope that Americans now realize, with this subversion of our system of justice and the rule of law in this country, just exactly how corrupt they are."
Apparently, Bush considers reporting to prison excessive punishment. Fortunately, most of Bush's buddies won't be convicted during his term, because it seems unlikely that the next president will hand out "get out of jail free" cards quite so easily.
Oh how things can change when it involves people you know, or worse yet, know you
.
"I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own, unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair."
-- George W. Bush, writing in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep.
I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner.
Furious I can't tell you how unsurprised yet furious I was. Why won't the electorate stand up and speak out! Apathy is often evil in an amount equal to or in excess of opinion.
In protest of the "Evil Empire" I watched French movies all day yesterday.
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