Saturday, July 14, 2007
Compassion For Criminal Politicians
In light of Scooter Libby having his sentenced commuted by President Bush, a group of Louisiana politicians are attempting to have the same done for crooked former Governor Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politics is tricky. Back in the 1990's, the two finalists for Governor were Edwards and David Duke. The infamous bumper sticker at the time read "Vote For The Crook: It's Important". Edwards did end up winning and committing more crimes while in office. He is in prison until 2011. At the age of 80, it looks highly doubtful he will hold on for that long.
Republican former Senator J. Bennett Johnston, and former Governor Dave Treen are working with former democratic Senator John Breaux to try to get Edwards, a democrat, out of the pokey.
It may even work. If only the rest of the people in prison had such people advocating for them. Judge Walton sardonically noted how all these powerful people were interested in "justice" for Scooter Libby, but for other people not so much. Edwards has some powerful backers as well.
It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse.
Until we begin showing compassion for other people convicted of racketeering, Governor Edwards needs to remain in prison. The elites in politics believe that when one of their own gets caught breaking the law they deserve compassion and less time than anybody else. I would argue the opposite. A mob boss who is racketeering is doing what is expected of him. A governor acting under the color of authority doesn't need a bipartisan justice committee trying to get him freed.
We are all equal under the law right?
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
The New Republican
Marty Peretz, editor of the New Republic, blogs about how he is a member of the Scooter Libby legal defense team and Scooter's bills are quite large so people should quit bitching about the $5,000,000 they raised.
The cognitive dissonance is quite stunning when the New Republic wonders why democrats don't trust them after all the Lieberwhoring and now this effort to support progressives favorite cause. No justice for Scooter, no peace!
What exactly is the target audience for this dying magazine? I don't have an answer, and the publisher doesn't either judging by the long term trend on subscribers.
Where have you gone Spencer Ackerman? A lonely nation turns it's eyes to you.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Excessive Sentence
When the CIA requested an investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's name, Scooter Libby obstructed justice, lied to the FBI, lied to the grand jury, and there is no doubt of that. Because of this leak, the CIA front company Brewster-Jennings was exposed, Valerie Plame's CIA career was effectively ended, and any person who made contact with Brewster-Jennings "business employees" overseas were put in mortal danger.
President Bush says that receiving thirty months for lying to the FBI and a grand jury investigating this matter is excessive.
The federal mandatory minimum for possessing five grams of crack cocaine is five years in prison. Picture five packets of sweet & low. That is the amount of crack cocaine needed to guarantee you at least sixty months in federal prison.
Bush is being ridiculous, and is probably obstructing justice. What I would like to point out just as an aside to Bush's inanity is how we treat white collar criminals in the USA as composed to the poor. You loot savings & loans, leaving twenty-one thousand people wiped out of their life savings like Charles Keating did and you serve four and a half years. If only he had five grams of crack too. Then he would have been a serious criminal.Michael Milken did two years, and got to keep about a billion dollars too. Our system is upside down. Ivan Boesky did two years as well.
White collar criminals should be punished more heavily. The wags in DC, LA, and New York scream that they have families. Nothing was more sickening than reading James Carville and Mary Matalin bleat about Scooter's kids. These poor black men have wives and kids often. Write a fucking letter for them. How about that?
Middle and upper class people seem to think of poor people as less human, less deserving of compassion and redemption. How many people have been sent to prison for a very long time for nickle and dime drug offenses while the defenders of Scooter Libby have enjoyed grilling in the back yard, not giving a shit?
Just wondering.
Convincing Evidence Fred Hiatt Is An Idiot
Fred Hiatt, the consistently awful head of the Washington Post editorial section, writes another infuriating piece of drivel about the Presidential pardon of Scooter Libby.
Mr. Libby's trial provided convincing evidence that the revelation of Ms. Plame's identity was not the result of a conspiracy to punish her husband, administration critic Joseph C. Wilson IV -- the allegation that caused all the partisan furor surrounding the case and that led to Mr. Fitzgerald's appointment.
How did this trial do that? The one thing that was proven without a doubt was that Scooter Libby lied his ass off to the FBI and the grand jury. How then could this trial prove that Scooter Libby and say the sole member of the fourth branch of government, didn't discuss the fact that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative and they decided to proceed to destroy her career to send a message to Joe Wilson for speaking out of turn, not caring that they were blowing a spy's cover?
How can a person write this statement without blushing? Convincing evidence? Ok Fred Hiatt. Convince me that Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby were just innocently leaking the wife's name with the best of intentions here. Must you always be this wrong?
Outing Valerie Plame to blow her cover is a question of intent. By lying, Scooter Libby didn't allow the prosecutor to know exactly what he and Cheney knew and what their motives were in leaking her name. Convincing evidence? Scooter never testified even after his lawyer said he would. Please show the convincing evidence for those of us who are too slow to make such an intuitive leap.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Today it's time to just say no mas. David Broder's column today is both erroneous and offensive at the same time. I want to blame it on age. Otherwise, the man is just a horse's ass. Today's column is about the Scooter Libby trial.
Now, many conservatives are up in arms about Walton "throwing the book" at Libby. Part of their criticism is based on their belief that Libby's long and effective government service -- attested to by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and a host of other worthies-- should mitigate whatever errors in judgment he made in this case.
It goes downhill from here. One would think that referring to Henry Kissinger, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, et al as "worthies" would be the low point of a column, perhaps even a career, but Broder was just getting warmed up.
Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine -- a further provocation to conservatives.
The CIA said Valerie Plame was covert, the Special Prosecutor said she was covert, the congressional testimony showed she was covert. Former colleagues, the judge agreed. How also are conservatives supposed to be provoked here? Libby leaked to all these "liberal" media outlets, whose reporters were willing to go to jail to protect him? It's their fault now?
I think they have a point. This whole controversy is a sideshow -- engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to "get" Rove for something or other.
They have a point??? His wife's name is Valerie Plame Wilson. She was a career CIA agent and she is a patriot whose career was ruined by people like Scooter Libby and your friend Karl Rove. You are supposed to be a journalist, not a water carrier. Dismissing her as "his wife" and pretending Karl Rove was a choir boy in all this is a discredit to truth, governmental integrity, and downright boorish.
Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.
A CIA agent named Valerie Plame and her CIA front company Brewster-Jennings were blown by an administration official who did it out of petty spite due to having a problem with her husband. She worked in the field of weapons of mass destruction. Anybody she met overseas was put into danger by this relevation now that their government knows she wasn't a business woman but an undercover operative trying to learn their military secrets.That is old fashioned midwestern values Dave? The mafia has a better code of ethics.
Retire please. What you wrote here was more profane than any common curse word uttered by the critics you too easily dismiss.
Friday, June 08, 2007
It's highly amusing and at the same time infuriating to see habitually wrong wingnut pundit Bill Kristol demanding justice for Scooter Libby, screaming at President Bush to pardon him.
"For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage -- well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?"
E.J. Dionne makes the worthwhile point that those who are yelling the loudest about pardoning Libby are the ones who got the whole Iraq fiasco the most horribly wrong. None was any more wrong than Bill Kristol, who thought the idea of Sunnis and Shia fighting each other in Iraq was just craziness.
Scooter Libby leaked Valerie Wilson's name, and lied to the grand jury protecting their interests and reputations. It's kind of sleazy for them to try to get him freed in effect, whitewashing their crimes of bad judgement that got us to this mess.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
One of the letters written in defense of Scooter Libby was written by Mary Matalin and signed by her husband James Carville, who is working as an adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
The he said/she said act is starting to run a bit too thin at the moment. Mary Matalin was on the White House Iraq Study Group along with Libby cooking up bogus justifications for us to go to war. Love happens. I can accept that. Scooter Libby though is a partisan hack who helped lie us into war, and outed a CIA agent because her husband criticized a Republican administration. He then lied about it on the stand.
James Carville might have thought this letter was going to be kept secret. Ooops. It shows how much of what goes on in D.C. amongst the chattering class is a big game to them.
What Scooter Libby did was serious. He committed perjury about outing a CIA agent, an act that could have gotten her overseas contacts killed. Somebody may have died for all we know. The fact that it was done for partisan politics and Carville is defending the man shows that his time should be over in democratic partisan politics.
Are you listening Senator Clinton?
Like many, I will be following the coverage at Firedoglake. The prosecution is asking for three years. The defense is asking to make Scooter the new Santa Claus, give him fairy dust, no prison time, and one trillion dollars, or something like that.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Story on the Scooter Libby trial and the possibilities of a pardon by Spikey Isikoff and Richard Wolffe.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Denis Collins, a Washington journalist on the Scooter Libby jury, described sentiments in the jury room reflecting those in the Senate Democratic cloakroom: "It was said a number of times. . . . Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?" Besides presidential adviser Karl Rove, he surely meant Vice President Cheney and maybe President Bush. Oddly, the jurors appeared uninterested in hearing from Richard Armitage, the source of the CIA leak.
Why could that be Robert? Perhaps it was because the trial was focused on the perjury and obstruction of justice and not the leak? Could the jurors have been focused on Karl Rove and Cheney because Ted Wells used his opening arguments saying that Libby was being made a scapegoat for Karl Rove and Dick Cheney then didn't produce any evidence to support that claim? Could that be the reason why they wanted to hear from Rove and Cheney you dick?
The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his "day job" (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson's identity.
Lies, lies, and more damned lies. Patrick Fitzgerald said he couldn't investigate what had happened exactly in the leak because Scooter "threw sand in the umpire's face" so it was impossible to figure out what happened.
It's obvious that things originated with Cheney giving instructions to Scooter Libby. It was Cheney who wanted to investigate Joe Wilson, and who Valerie Plame was. But with Scooter Libby lying about everything, it would be impossible to prove that Cheney was criminal in his actions because it's impossible to know what Cheney exactly told Libby because of the lying and obstruction of justice.
While my column on Wilson's mission triggered Libby's misery, I played but a minor role in his trial. Subpoenaed by his defense team, I testified that I had phoned him in reporting the Wilson column and that he had said nothing about Wilson's wife. Other journalists said the same thing under oath, but we apparently made no impression on the jury.
How fucking stupid do you take us to be Novakula? Rudy Guiliani didn't bang his third cousin, so obviously he didn't sleep with his second cousin either. I think you made a perfect impression of who and what you are on the jury btw. That is why Scooter probably shouldn't have called you to the stand.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Read today's editorial from the Washington Post to make your blood boil. Apparently Scooter Libby is an honorable public servant, and Joe Wilson is a big fat liar. Fred Hiatt needs some feedback. I can't believe he still is running the Graham Empire's reputation into the ground with no personal consequences.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
On the drive home about 25 minutes ago, I was listening to the top of the hour ABC news and their coverage of the Libby verdict. First they had on analyst Royal Oakes, who is the ABC legal analyst. He stated, and I am paraphrasing, that this verdict means that you have to be really careful how you remember conversations now when you talk to the FBI, because now you can be prosecuted if you forget what exactly happened.
WTF? This wasn't a slipped memory here. This was bald faced lying. Either Scooter Libby had discussed Valerie Plame with almost 10 people prior to talking to Tim Russert, or he didn't. Bad memory my ass. This spin by Oakes basically stated that Scooter Libby's defense was accurate. It was just different people with different recollections.
Next, came Mark Halperin. He of course has been infamous lately with his declarative statements that he was going to tilt as far as possible to be fair to Republicans. He did not dissapoint. He mentioned three names who were crowing about the verdict and were likely to make political hay out of this. Come on, you probably can pick all three without thinking. That's right, he discussed Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and Teddy Kennedy all being smug and liberal over it. I am surprised he didn't mention Michael Moore for good measure. Halperin did not discuss the fact that the VP's chief of staff lied to the FBI and a grand jury, just those coastal liberal elites who were picking on the poor fellow.
Liberal media?
Libby found guilty on counts 1,2,4,5. Found not guilty on count 3.
Yeehaw!
Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.
Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.
Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and two counts of perjury.
Jurors cleared him of a second count of making a false statement.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Dick Cheney flew from Oman to Islamibad in a cargo plane called "The Spirit of Strom Thurmond". So far, Al Sharpton hasn't had any conmments. While this is amusing, there are two things that strike me from this trip. First, the media of course is getting ignored by Deadeye Dick. Via Newsweek, we can hear the gripes.
Just after dawn on Tuesday morning, reporters were taken to the mess hall, where Cheney was dining with the troops. "How was breakfast?" a reporter yelled to the VP. "Breakfast was excellent," Cheney replied, in what were his first three words to the press pool traveling with him on the trip, now in its eighth day.
That has to be seriously depressing for the media crew. 8 days traveling around the middle east and Cheney finally decides to break his silence by commenting on his breakfast? Hold the presses in New York!
The other thing that seems to be hinted at is that this trip is very slapdash. All these stops along the route were not planned when the journey began. It is making me suspect that Cheney is attempting to keep himself out of the country until after the Scooter Libby verdict. This ducking of attention could have proved fatal yesterday if the bombers at the Afghani base had better timing.
