President Bush's decision to commute the 30-month prison sentence of former vice presidential aide Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby has generated seething rage from the administration's critics.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald sees the commutation as an inside-the-Beltway scam:
That Lewis Libby has been protected by George Bush from the consequences of his crimes only highlights how corrupt and broken our political system is. It reveals nothing new. This is the natural, inevitable outgrowth of our rancid political culture, shaped and slavishly defended by our Beltway ruling class and our serious, sober opinion-making elite.
The disasters and rampant lawlessness and fundamental erosion of our country's political values and institutions are exactly what Fred Hiatt and David Broder and Time Magazine and Tim Russert and Tom Friedman and the New Republic geniuses have spent the last six years protecting, enabling and defending.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann ... well, the "Countdown" host's reaction defies description:
A president who lied us into a war and, in so doing, needlessly killed 3,584 of our family and friends and neighbors; a president whose administration initially tried to destroy the first man to nail that lie; a president whose henchmen then ruined the career of the intelligence asset that was his wife when intelligence assets were never more essential to the viability of the republic; a president like that has tonight freed from the prospect of prison the only man ever to come to trial for one of the component felonies in what may be the greatest crime of this young century.Even some of Mr. Bush's supporters are displeased by the commutation, including the Wall Street Journal:
President Bush's commutation late yesterday afternoon of the prison sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will at least spare his former aide from 2 1/2 years in prison. But by failing to issue a full pardon, Mr. Bush is evading responsibility for the role his Administration played in letting the Plame affair build into fiasco and, ultimately, this personal tragedy. ....James Joyner of Outside the Beltway has a wide-ranging roundup of reactions, as does HotAir.com, where AllahPundit remarks:
Joe Wilson's original, false accusation about pre-war intelligence metastasized into the issue of who "outed" his wife, Valerie Plame, as an intelligence officer. As the event unfolded, it fell to Mr. Libby to defend the Administration against Mr. Wilson's original charge, with little public assistance or support from the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell or Stephen Hadley.
I guess this is his way of splitting the difference between people who want Libby pardoned and people who think he should serve out the sentence prescribed by the judicial process. ...What's your reaction?
Stories like this are so transparently partisan that it’s almost not worth covering the reaction.
-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times
Comments (4)
First, as an American citizen who enjoys reading news and opinion from across the spectrum of media available; your editor continues to misinform the readers of the Washington Times by touting once again, that Valerie Plame-Wilson was not a covert CIA agent at the time her identity was revealed. The CIA has confirmed this fact. She was covert. Second, complaining about the dollars spent to investigate the outing of her identity, cannot compare to the amount the GOP wasted on trying to prosecute Whitewater, and then moving to impeach Clinton for the same crime Libby has been convicted of. As a moderate, I must agree that all of the issues that led Libby to lie to the FBI and obstruct justice must be investigated and legitimate impeachment proceedings must be pursued against this president and vice president. The American people are intelligent. They see all of this for what it really is. Take a poll. The majority of the American public would no doubt support impeachment after this Libby mess. Republicans would be much better off in 2008 if they introduced articles of impeachment (and take credit for it being their idea) and presented a real set of cojones to the world.
Thanks
Posted by ohiomom | July 6, 2007 1:28 AM
Hang him from the nearest tree and save the rope for the rest of the neocon scum.
Posted by richard | July 10, 2007 4:53 AM
Scooter was the fall guy here and Fitzpatrick should have dropped this case altogether. It was politically embarrassing for everyone. Commuting the sentence was the right thing to do. Bush may as well have pardoned him altogether given the criticism this has already mustered.
As an aside, how do sub-mediocre intellects like Keith Olbermann get their own shows? His reckless comments are on par with Rosie O'Donnell's. I guess he gets away with it because his ratings are lower than Katie Couric's. Apparently Nielson tracks ratings for televisions tuned in at nursing homes and hospitals where the viewer is too sick to leave his bed to change the channel.
Posted by JohnK | July 10, 2007 1:21 PM
I think proceedings should be initiated against attorney Fitzgerald for wasting our taxpayer money on such obvious nonsense.
Posted by L. Werres | July 20, 2007 8:44 AM