Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence

[USMC the Almighty]

There is some controversy over whether or not she was covert, but like I said -- I really don't care. This "issue" just doesn't matter to me. In a week no one will even be talking about it.

 

[Fink]

Typical Obama. Platitudes and rhetoric, but nothing else. Get back to me when he does something worth noting.

As for the commutation of Libby -- who cares? This is such a non-issue to me.

What would you have him do? Kidnap Libby and put him in jail himself?

Also, a non-issue? The President letting a personal aide who lied to a federal grand jury off the hook is a big issue. That $250,000 doesn't mean jack. The online legal defense fund for Libby, if they haven't already, will gladly donate to the cause.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

What would you have him do? Kidnap Libby and put him in jail himself?

All he said about this is "We need to reform partisan politics and restore faith in government." Well thanks, Obama. Real insightful.

Also, a non-issue? The President letting a personal aide who lied to a federal grand jury off the hook is a big issue. That $250,000 doesn't mean jack. The online legal defense fund for Libby, if they haven't already, will gladly donate to the cause.

So if lying under oath is such a big deal to you, I assume you supported Clinton's impeachment?

And anyway, what Scooter lied about wasn't related to the investigation.

 

[top gun]

Typical Obama. Platitudes and rhetoric, but nothing else. Get back to me when he does something worth noting.

As for the commutation of Libby -- who cares? This is such a non-issue to me.

Let's all be honest and straight forward here. Barack Obama has done many very good things in the course of his life. Not the least of which is he served noteably and honorably in state senate and he's now a United States Congressman. All of which to me sets him up as more qualified for president "especially on a national/foriegn affairs level than any govenor... of which we've had quite a few become president.

In addition he's brilliant which is something we haven't seen in the Whitehouse in almost 7 years.

As far as Libby being a "non-issue"... well of course you would hope that to be the case. But come on... I don't think I would be misrepresenting if I said your posts appear to usually always be carrying water for this president & this administration no matter what they do. I think in 08 things like the Libby pardon may still be a "non-issue" for you but a big red flag of coruption and cover up to the majority of the American people... and that's a good thing!

 

[USMC the Almighty]

Let's all be honest and straight forward here. Barack Obama has done many very good things in the course of his life. Not the least of which is he served noteably and honorably in state senate and he's now a United States Congressman. All of which to me sets him up as more qualified for president "especially on a national/foriegn affairs level than any govenor... of which we've had quite a few become president.

What has he done during that time? I'm open to hearing anything significant that Obama has done.

In addition he's brilliant which is something we haven't seen in the Whitehouse in almost 7 years.

As far as Libby being a "non-issue"... well of course you would hope that to be the case. But come on... I don't think I would be misrepresenting if I said your posts appear to usually always be carrying water for this president & this administration no matter what they do. I think in 08 things like the Libby pardon may still be a "non-issue" for you but a big red flag of coruption and cover up to the majority of the American people... and that's a good thing!

I've disagreed w/ the Republicans and Bush on a number of issues, most recently being illegal immigration.

And give me a break with the "corruption" talk. That's a part of politics. Clinton's Administration was notoriously corrupt. You can elect 3rd and 4th parties and they'll be corrupt.

 

[Castle]

Can someone clear one thing up for me!? Where was the outrage when Clinton was busy pardoning all his seedy pals? I just don't remember the uproar then that I'm seeing and hearing now. It seems we didn't really care much about it back then. Now Bush is issuing the SAME get out of jail free card and the leftists are passing football sized kidney stones over it.

-Castle

 

[Bunz]

Can someone clear one thing up for me!? Where was the outrage when Clinton was busy pardoning all his seedy pals? I just don't remember the uproar then that I'm seeing and hearing now. It seems we didn't really care much about it back then. Now Bush is issuing the SAME get out of jail free card and the leftists are passing football sized kidney stones over it.

-Castle

It was there, the whole thing about Marc Rich I believe his name was. But that is apples and oranges. Clinton never commuted nor pardoned anyone in his own cabinet, especially over a serious matter like this. It screams of coverup for Cheney at the very least.
Fact: Bush has said he doesnt tolerate leaks, especially of classified information in his administration.
Fact: Bush never commuted a single sentence of a death row inmate while he was Governor of Texas. Including some very questionable convictions especially of mentally disabled people.
Fact: The op-ed piece written by Joseph Wilson was contradictary of the Bush administration claim about uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger, The Joseph Wilson claims were true and the Bush claims were false.
Fact: This was done as punishment to the Wilson family for thier dissent on the matter.
Why is it that any time people are complaining about Bush, the first thing people say is Clinton this and Clinton that. Lets blame Bush for his mistakes and Clinton for his. They are two different people with two different administrations.
Because Nixon was involved in Watergate, do people immediatly throw out what LBJ did? No. The Clinton argument holds less water than an overturned strainer.

 

[SW85]

A true miscarriage, however, this wasn't a natural miscarriage, we'll call this the presidential support of aborting laws.

Eh? He didn't exactly make up the Presidential power of commutations, y'know -- it is a long-standing part of the Constitution. How you can say he's "aborting laws" when acting in perfect compliance with them is beyond me.

Guys, Libby's conviction was not exactly the most germane thing to the Plame case. It was Richard Armitage, not Libby, who leaked Plame's identity. And the leak itself was not a crime, even if it was sleazy (I don't even think it was particularly sleazy). And Libby was not convicted of anything immediately related to the Plame investigation, merely for obstruction of justice related to his recollection of an earlier conversation.

So, in summary, he was found guilty of lying about not remembering a conversation for a non-crime he didn't commit. USMC was righter than he knows when he said this was a non-issue; if only someone had told Patrick Fitzgerald. Whether or not the conviction was legitimate, it was so far removed from the actual cause of serving justice that a commutation of his sentence was hardly beyond the pale of legitimate discussion.

The fact that Libby worked in the White House is irrelevant. If the commutation is questionable, it is questionable on its face, not because the man who's sentence was commuted used to work for the man who issued the commutation.

r0beph, you don't get to complain about "logical fallacies" while indulging in them yourself.

But there are established Justice Department guidelines that presidents are supposed to, but not mandated to, go by when it comes to INTERNAL PARDONS AND COMMUTED SENTENCES.

There has never been a time when Presidents were even morally obligated to follow such guidelines; they were put in place for the benefit of prisoners, not Presidents, to ensure that their requests would be seen and considered by the President.

The President is not obligated to consider those requests, nor is he allowed to consider only those requests. Constitutionally speaking, he can pardon people who haven't even been formally charged with a crime. (By contrast, Justice vets applications under its guidelines so heavily that only those who have served at least five years of their sentences can apply). So don't be silly.

 

[Fink]

All he said about this is "We need to reform partisan politics and restore faith in government." Well thanks, Obama. Real insightful.

So if lying under oath is such a big deal to you, I assume you supported Clinton's impeachment?

And anyway, what Scooter lied about wasn't related to the investigation.

You didn't answer my question. What else can he do other than issue a statement and not do the same thing after he's elected?

I was in 8th grade when the whole Clinton dealy do went on, but looking back on it, yeah. Dude should have fessed up about Monica because adultery, as morally wrong as it is, isn't a crime. Perjury is and action was taken.

US v. Libby the first paragraph sums it up. He lied to federal prosecuters and obstructed the investigation of who leaked Valerie Plame's name. More than once.

Can someone clear one thing up for me!? Where was the outrage when Clinton was busy pardoning all his seedy pals? I just don't remember the uproar then that I'm seeing and hearing now. It seems we didn't really care much about it back then. Now Bush is issuing the SAME get out of jail free card and the leftists are passing football sized kidney stones over it.

-Castle

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[Castle]

It was there, the whole thing about Marc Rich I believe his name was. But that is apples and oranges. Clinton never commuted nor pardoned anyone in his own cabinet, especially over a serious matter like this. It screams of coverup for Cheney at the very least.
Fact: Bush has said he doesnt tolerate leaks, especially of classified information in his administration.
Fact: Bush never commuted a single sentence of a death row inmate while he was Governor of Texas. Including some very questionable convictions especially of mentally disabled people.
Fact: The op-ed piece written by Joseph Wilson was contradictary of the Bush administration claim about uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger, The Joseph Wilson claims were true and the Bush claims were false.
Fact: This was done as punishment to the Wilson family for thier dissent on the matter.
Why is it that any time people are complaining about Bush, the first thing people say is Clinton this and Clinton that. Lets blame Bush for his mistakes and Clinton for his. They are two different people with two different administrations.
Because Nixon was involved in Watergate, do people immediatly throw out what LBJ did? No. The Clinton argument holds less water than an overturned strainer.

Oh really. In 140 pardons and commutations, none give you pause but this one does?! I find this hard to believe unless of course this is all agenda driven. Well there I went and let the cat out of the bag. As if we didn't already know what all this moaning is truly about.

Instead of repeating SW85 I'll just quote him.

Guys, Libby's conviction was not exactly the most germane thing to the Plame case. It was Richard Armitage, not Libby, who leaked Plame's identity. And the leak itself was not a crime, even if it was sleazy (I don't even think it was particularly sleazy). And Libby was not convicted of anything immediately related to the Plame investigation, merely for obstruction of justice related to his recollection of an earlier conversation.

The fact that Libby worked in the White House is irrelevant. If the commutation is questionable, it is questionable on its face, not because the man who's sentence was commuted used to work for the man who issued the commutation.

Thank you SW85 for inserting a few facts that I'm sure were inadvertantly left out.

So is the commuted sentences of 16 FALN members worth mentioning? How about the Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory pardons for bank fraud. It seems Hillarys brother Tony made a bundle lobbying Clinton on their behalf. Of course there was Roger Clinton and his drug charges. The sordid list of pardons and commutations goes on but I trust you get my point. Was Clinton well within his rights as President to do this? As much as Bush is I would think. So why the double standard?

This all looks very much like a feeding frenzy and not much more.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Ahh, I see. So both are/were wrong with respect to pardons but one comes out smelling like a rose while the other is beat to a pulp over it. I'm thinking there is a little more to it than that.

-Castle

 

[SW85]

Beyond all of it not being a crime, to say that Plame's name was leaked as retaliation for her husband's positions is silly, anyway. The entire CIA was institutionally anti-war for years, and we're expected to believe a single mid-level bureaucratic malcontent was targeted for character assassination for holding the same views?

Plame's name was not "leaked." It was brought up -- by anti-war folk hero Richard Armitage, who still hasn't received an ounce of reprimand -- in connection with the fact that she sleazily used her anti-war connections to land her anti-war husband a job at the anti-war CIA. She couldn't exactly do this if she was undercover, now could she? She wasn't, which is why it wasn't a crime, and which is why she promptly went on national TV to complain about how her identity had been compromised. She did something sleazy and she got the whistle blown on her, so she deflected attention.

And now it turns out Libby was separated from the "leak investigation" (which was fraudulent to begin with) by something like three degrees of separation. Not only was he convicted of not remembering a conversation that wasn't related to the non-crime he didn't commit, the real sleazebag is being let off the hook. Like Mark Steyn said, one of the remarkable things about the American justice system is the total absence of a sense of proportion.

 

[steveox]

Didnt Bill Clinton Pardon MARC RICH? So Democrats have no right to complain when Bill Clinton Pardon Marc Rich a Billionare who failed to pay his taxes!

 

[TVoffBrainOn]

Didnt Bill Clinton Pardon MARC RICH? So Democrats have no right to complain when Bill Clinton Pardon Marc Rich a Billionare who failed to pay his taxes!

What's the future precedent set by Clinton pardoning Marc Rich?

By pardoning Libby, the precedent has been set for high ranking white house officials, cabinet members, and inner circle advisors to lie under oath to protect their bosses.

It's just another pillar of democracy being destroyed.

 

[top gun]

USMC the Almighty;16055]What has he done during that time? I'm open to hearing anything significant that Obama has done.

I mean what exactly do you want? He was well known for doing a lot as he was coming up helping the poor. He was well respected in the state legislature... good enough to be elected to the United States Senate. He was one of the only ones that didn't fall for the Bush/Cheney BS fabricated story about why we had to invade Iraq.

I mean he hasn't cured Aids or solved world hunger but at least he's not known for screwing everything most everything he touches up like President Bush.

I've disagreed w/ the Republicans and Bush on a number of issues, most recently being illegal immigration.

Come on my friend... you're a die hard pubbie. You were against the immigration bill because it wasn't "Conservative " enough. Even Bush was to the Left of you on that one. I sure wouldn't say that shows you're not pushing the Republican cause.

And give me a break with the "corruption" talk. That's a part of politics. Clinton's Administration was notoriously corrupt. You can elect 3rd and 4th parties and they'll be corrupt.

You see? That's just not true. The Republicans witch hunted Bill Clinton relentlessly the whole time he was in office. From Whitewater to smuggling cocaine to murder... NOTHING... absolutely zero charges... NOTHING. Finally through all this investigation... millions spent looking for anything... caught him having consensual private affair with another adult... and he lied about that to protect from embarrassing himself, his wife & daughter. That's what he did.

Bush on the other hand lied us into war where thousands of are best men & women have now been killed. Tens of thousands seriously wounded while running up a budget deficit like never before seen. And now he commutes (in the end will be a full pardon) the sentence handed down by jury and a Republican judge so an administration insider can skate protecting the Vice President and himself. Comparatively speaking this administration is Al Capone.

 

[Fink]

Didnt Bill Clinton Pardon MARC RICH? So Democrats have no right to complain when Bill Clinton Pardon Marc Rich a Billionare who failed to pay his taxes!

Jesus Tapdancing Christ on a muffin.