Posted on 10/30/2005 10:32:30 PM PST by goldstategop
"I think what we see here today, when a vice president's chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, it does show the world that this is a country that takes its law seriously; that all citizens are bound by the law. But what we need to also show the world is that we can also apply the same safeguards to all our citizens, including high officials. Much as they must be bound by the law, they must follow the same rules."
Independent Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Friday, Oct. 28, 2005
Those were stirring words from Patrick Fitzgerald.
And, I believe, he means them.
His presentation to the nation Friday was professional and persuasive.
Personally, I am not at all concerned about the CIA leak case.
I don't believe anyone was hurt by the leaks.
Valerie Plame was no covert CIA agent, in my book. She had not been working overseas since 1996 and appeared unlikely to take any covert assignments abroad in the future.
Had Lewis Libby not lied under oath to investigators, I doubt very seriously he would be under indictment right now. Because no other crime appears to have been committed.
Nevertheless, Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is now facing 30 years in jail for a cover-up of what he leaked to reporters.
While I like to see the high and mighty brought low as much as the next guy, the possible sentence seems a little excessive.
Where was this guy Fitzgerald when we really needed him?
Where was he when former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was caught red-handed stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives, destroying some and then lying about it to investigators?
If ever there was a crime that warranted 30 years in the slammer, it was that theft from the people and the ensuing cover-up.
But Sandy Berger walked. He got away with a modest fine and a prohibition against taking another national security job in the federal government until at least 2009. Big deal. His party is out of the White House until then.
Is anyone else struck with the contrast between these two prosecutions?
While I appreciate that independent counsels want to send signals to the people that even high officials can be brought down for violating the law, we also have a concept in this country of "equal justice under the law."
Can anyone honestly look at these two cases Libby and Berger and tell me they were treated equally?
I don't think so.
Now, I don't have any love for the Bush administration. In fact, it was the Bush Justice Department that let Berger walk. I don't know Scooter Libby wouldn't know him if I tripped over him. I never heard of him until the Valerie Plame case.
But 30 years for lying under oath?
Does anyone remember another high official who lied under oath?
I seem to remember a former president.
And what was his sentence?
Zip. Zilch. Nada.
His defenders say he was only lying about sex in the White House with an intern.
Well, heck, Libby was only lying about what he told reporters.
What's a worse crime? Lying about abusive sexual behavior in a sexual harassment case, or lying about what you told some reporters?
I'm a reporter and I tell you the former is a much worse offense.
So where, for heaven's sake, is the proportionality?
Where is the equal justice under the law?
Is it fair and just to throw the book at one official and let others skate for more serious crimes?
Does that breed respect of the law by the people?
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
And Hillary still has 900+ FBI files and a lot of sworn people have abandoned their oaths and done absolutly nothing to support justice in this one. Bad, Bad, Bad. what's so special about this traitor that so many good men will do nothing?
His point about the Bush Justice dept. letting Berger skate is so true and really irks me. From day one, the Bushies played nice with the democrats in the foolish belief this will be reciprocated. Not giving a crap about the truth, or the rule of law, or what conservatives believe to be ethical, rational, norms. They will pay in one form or another.
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
Believe me, I think President Bush finally woke up on this. Mark my words to the end of his term, it's gonna be hardball, starting with the Supreme Court nomination.
All this pompous ranting about rule of law is bunk. Between prosecutorial discretion and judicial activism how can anyone take any of it seriously? there are probably hundreds of murder victims in DC whose cases are never even investigated, and we waste money on nonsense.
I hope you are right.
Nah, he'll probably have Fitz over for popcorn and a movie. NEW TONE.
Perhaps.
"I don't remember ever worrying about whether the facts that I felt were public knowledge might have been classified. But even if I had, I would probably have rationalized that anything I had heard on the grapevine couldn't possibly be a state secret. If every political aide was prosecuted for those kinds of conversations with the press corps, I'm afraid there wouldn't be enough jails to hold us."
Davis expressed an essential truth here. The entire rationale fueling the media frenzy over the outing of Valerie Plane came from the left' s allegations that the administration {Acting in furtherence of a CONSPIRACY] willfully damaged national security to cover lies which wrongly justified our going to war. Now that fuel is completely out of the tank. No one has been indicted for jeopardizing national security in any way. No one has been indicted for revealing the name of a CIA agent. Karl Rove has not been indicted at all. And the only man indicted, Libby, has been indicted for allegedly lying about who "first" told him that the CIA agent in question, although not covert, was in fact a CIA agent. Libby has testified he was so informed by press reporters but notes of conversations indicate the source of his knowledge might have come from an official in the state Department or from the vice president. It doesn't matter a whit. There are no national security implications in either alternative. Twist as it will, the left cannot make a scandal of this.
Middle America will scratch its head when it becomes aware that this entire flap has been reduced to alleged perjury about the source of an innocent fact. Davis sees that now, so he is attempting to show his fellow Democrats a path to the higher ground before middle American gets really angry that there was so much ado about nothing and begins to resent those who manufactured this flap.
With all the fuel gone the scandal, which never was a scandal, will quickly fade from the popular consciousness. While I do not agree with the armchair defense lawyers on this thread who believe that the prosecutor has no case, I do believe that he has no [grave]crime -that is, he has a technical violation which at worst is a knowing misstatement of a inmaterial and inconsequential innocent fact. How long will the judge sentence Scooter Libby to jail for such an innocuous act?
I believe the corner has been turned for the Bush administration. He will appoint a rock ribbed conservative and the battle will be joined in the Senate which the administration will win even if it loses the battle over a given nominee. The Democrats will be shown it to be filibusterers and obstructionists, characteristics which cost them Senate seats in the last elections. Bush needs only to put up a man or a woman with first-class legal credentials without worry over ideology providing the nominee has an originalist ideology. Then let the Democrats bring it on.
Before the next by elections the administration will begin to build down troops in Iraq as Iraqi forces are built up and the political situation there continues to improve with the election of new leaders in December. The administration must only show that there is a plan for the ultimate success in Iraq but it need not actually achieve that success before the election a year away.
The president has already signaled that he is changing course and will pull his head out of the sand on the issue of immigration. If he does not wobble and persists in this course he will further shore up the base and steal a huge potential issue from Hillary and the other Democrats.
There remains only for the administration to couple its campaign for permanent tax cuts with meaningful spending limits. If that is offered the whole of the country will respond because we have a booming economy. What we don't have as a booming voice in the bully pulpit. Somehow, George Bush has got to learn how to tell his side of the story.
I'll mark those words just in case you need to eat them for breakfast. Or lunch if Bush is late on naming his SCOTUS nominee today. :)
Just a second there! We seem to have found out it was Libby. Fitzgerald said Scooter was the first administration official to reveal the Plame information to the press.
So true, so very true.
Shameless self-promotion ping:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1511666/posts
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