3947

This non-crime needs a real pardon

It's been interesting to see the left go crazy over the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence, to allow him to stay out of jail while he appeals. Many conservatives think it didn't go far enough, and I'm one of them. Usually, whining that so-and-so did much worse isn't much of a defense, but when I think of Sandy Berger and this theft of documents from the national archives and the little wrist slap he got, I'm just stunned by this injustice. And the out and out crooks that Clinton pardoned! Oh my gosh--and for what--money for Hillary's campaign?

Here's the take at Opinion Journal about the lack of courage in the Bush administration:

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.

In no small part because of these profiles in non-courage, it was Mr. Libby who found himself caught up in prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's hunt for the Plame leaker, which he and his masters at Justice knew from Day One to be State Department official Richard Armitage. As Mr. Fitzgerald's obsessive exercise ground forward, Mr. Libby got caught in a perjury net that we continue to believe trapped an innocent man who lost track of what he said, when he said it, and to whom.

One other thing that puzzles me is our prosecutor system. These guys are given way too much power. Whether it is Nifong, or Starr or Fitzgerald, the system stinks, because you are obviously guilty until you've spent down all your funds, or the public gets tired of reading about it.

And Joe Wilson, the biggest liar of them all, goes free, the darling of the MSM. I'm baffled by Washington.

3883

Sandy vs. Scooter

"Why the "unusually harsh sentence," as William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who served on the advisory committee on sentencing guidelines, put it? Because, the judge explained, "people who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of the nation in their hands, have a special obligation not to do anything that might create a problem." Of course, Sandy Berger, national security adviser to Bill Clinton, hid original documents on his person, took them out of the National Archives, destroyed them, and lied to investigators. One might think of this as "creating a problem." But Berger got no prison time and a fine one-fifth that imposed on Libby." Kristol

But then, Berger was a Democrat. The President has the power to pardon, even for a such a strange non-crime as this.

Live Breathe and Die: "In recent years, the Democratic playbook has included talking points designed to convince Americans that the Republican Party is mired in corruption. The phrase that Democrats incorporated into their public pronouncements was a Republican ‘culture of corruption.’ As evidence of this, they point to Scooter Libby, charged with lying to a grand jury. They also point to the political witch-hunt in Texas where charges had been brought against Republican, Tom Delay.

What the press sweeps under the rug though is the ongoing evidence of true corruption in the Democratic Party. Unlike Scooter Libby, who apparently had lapses in memory, getting dates mixed up, many prominent Democrats were caught red handed, intentionally sticking their hands in the cookie jar. There are varying degrees of crime, and the real criminal intent seems to be on the side of the Democrats. Whether or not the public hears about the culture of corruption amongst the Dems is another story."