Comments on: Libby Gets What He Deserves — Freedom

National Review Online: A Full Pardon Is Ideal, But Bush's Commutation Is Praiseworthy

[ubrew12]

NRO:"after the guilty verdict, Fitzgerald argued that the judge should sentence Libby as if Libby had been convicted leaking Mrs. Wilson's identity. The prosecutor wanted to throw the book at Libby for a crime for which Libby was never charged."

No, Libby was convicted of a much worse crime: obstruction of justice, in this case, about TREASON (not a BJ). Outing a CIA agents classified status puts every operation he/she's been involved with in jeopardy. Doing so during WAR is doubly traitorous. It's nothing to fool around with, yet the jurists vocally agreed after the verdict that that's exactly the way Libby treated it... as if he KNEW he was 'untouchable'. Turns out he was...

temporarily.

I had thought that the VP's office had more important, actual work to do. But instead they spent valuable time ruining the career of someone because they didn't like what her husband said. They didn't even face Wilson, then messed with his wife. Even Tony Suprano liked to face people head on, but not Bush, not Cheney.

Wimps and cowards, they had to pick on the guys wife

[clemenhagen1]

A refresher course for you Libby "amnesty" defenders:

BushCo needs to scare us into war - "smoking gun a mushroom cloud" - knowingly lie about "yellowcake uranium" during State of the Union though document clearly a forgery.

Joseph Wilson - former ambassador to Niger and attache to Iraq sent to investigate - exposes the fiction for what it was...a manipulation (i.e. Downing Street Memo) to fan flames of war.

Cheney furious! Demands revenge to not only punish Wilson but to also send shot across-the-bow of the intelligence community: don't mess with our fictions about the war or we will bury you.

Libby, Armitage, Rove, and others knowingly expose Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative. Novak prints Plame's name & CIA front-operation, Brewster-Jennings, in his column.

CIA demands investigation into treasonous leak - Fitzgerald appointed when Ashcroft recuses himself.

Rove and Libby lie to the grand jury to cover the trail and obstruct justice. Right-wing echo chamber in full blown spin mode, smears Wilson and Plame - Talking Points created to obstruct the facts of the case and blind the ignorant.

Fitzgerald, understanding full-well the source of the original leak (Cheney), opts to charge and convict Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Please try to remember the real story here, and not get lost in all the conservative mythology.

[rahe2]

a corrupt decision from a corrupt regime. If the GOP's only defence is "Well Bill Clinton did the same thing " then what is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats ? What happened to the party that was going to change the way they do business in Washington ?
Power does corrupt.

[aaabee-2009]

%u201CThe irony in this case is that the president said he would 'deal with anyone who leaked,' and now his way of dealing with Scooter Libby is to pardon him.%u201D

%u201CFor him to say that the penalty is 'excessive' may well be true, but it was the same crime that President Bill Clinton was impeached for by a Republican House of Representatives and in which 50 U.S. senators, Republicans, voted to remove him from office. So Republicans as a party thought perjury and obstruction of justice were sufficient to remove a twice-elected president from office. And now the president is saying that 30 months in prison is an excessive penalty for the same exact crime. It%u2019s inconsistent.%u201D

[imnho]

%u201COur government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.%u201D-Louis Brandeis.

By commuting the sentance of Scotter Libby, GW has invited everyone to take the law lightly. The next time they decided to punish someone by outing them they may either compromise a major source of intellgence or get someone killed. This bunch of people is arrogant if they think that it could not happen to them

[macusweil]

Disgusting.

This man represents all that is wrong with the federal government. The GOP culture of corruption has done enormous damage to this country.

Libby is a convicted felon who has jeopardized national security.

[walt1944-2009]

It is obvious from the article written by "the editors" of the National Review that they all must have crisp new membership cards from the Republican Party and, undoubtedly have received "Thank You" letters from the White House signed personally by the Great Emperor Bush!

I would ask if these very same editors examine every case going through the judicial system to look for "missteps" in the judicial system, or perhaps they look only at those cases affecting the court of the Great Emperor and the remaining majority be damned! I have memories of serving jury duty and being told by judges that there must be ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT in a jury's mind that the defendant is guilty, that if any doubt exists, you cannot find that person guilty.

Yet, here we have the editors of the National Review strongly suggesting the jury was "unreasonable" and a chief executive who says he "respects" the decision of the jury, but leaves the door wide open for a full pardon for "the Scoot" down the road!

We have become a nation of avarice, lies, deceit, greed, and misinformation, where power and greed are the benchmarks for "success", where the laws are subverted for the purposes of the rich and powerful, and where the rights gaurenteed for everyone by the Constitution have been interpreted to apply only to the rich and powerful.

On this 4th of July, I feel sorry for my granddaughter and the country she will have to call "home".

[aaabee-2009]

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental com-pact between yourself and the majority of this nation%u2019s citizens%u2014the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.

This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics.

The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of %u201Ca permanent Republican majority,%u201D as if such a thing%u2014or a permanent Democratic majority%u2014is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

keith olbermann
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19588942

[aaabee-2009]

"We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected%u2014indeed those who did not believe he had been elected%u2014willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it."
Keith Olbermann

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id
/19588942/