Libby Verdict in: Guilty on 4 out of 5 counts!. Now what? Will the White House wait for the appeal? Will they pardon Scooter?
According to one blog I read, Fox Noise is already saying that the verdict is flawed because there is no underlying crime. How soon they forget. Perjury was enough to impeach a sitting President when the underlying offense was not only not a crime, but was largely inconsequential to the Nation. Here, legally there may not be a criminal violation, but the underlying action was to out a CIA agent who worked on WMD AND to push us into a disastrous war with bad intelligence.
4 comments:
There was an interview on Fox with one of the jurors. He said that they felt somewhat sorry for Libby, in that he was the fall guy. He also indicated that they felt there were others, such as Karl Rove, that were more responsible.
I'd say that I am outraged, but I guess that I have come to expect this kind of BS. In my lifetime (starting with Nixon), I can't think of a songle president that wasn't pulling this kind of stuff, to some extent.
If the Libby case were it, I would agree with you. I was thinking the other day of a list of scandals (might be my next post) and the list kept growing. Of course, many of them are scandalous to me, but not necessarily to all.
energy policy
response to 9-11 investigations
Iraq war
Plame outing
Abu Ghraib
torture memo
Guy who wrote torture memo named AG
Threatens to veto ban on torture
signing statment says will ignore ban on torture
Jose Padilla case (enemy combatant declaration of American citizen)
habeas corpus removed
FISA court ignored
Wiretapping American citizens
data mining
More signing statments say can open first class mail
"I am the Decider"
Entire service of Don Rumsfeld
Katrina and the guitar playing President (I used to get drunk here, heh heh heh)
extraordinary rendition
disbanding CIA unit after Bin Laden
Ratcheting up military to attack Iran
Everything Dick Cheney has ever said
Oh, and Cheney shoots his friend in the face
"I listen to the Generals on teh ground" except when they want more troops, I give them Rumsfeld, and when they want fewer troops, I give them a surge.
Purges 8 US attorneys to give room for Karl Rove's trained puppies, and we find that Bushites and Republicans were leaning on US attorneys to prosecute Democrats--ah, but the power is only bad when it is in liberal hands.
Walter Reed disaster.
Tony Snow says it is the Defense Department's problem--doesn't note that Bush people have been privatizing everything in site--including healthcare for our wounded.
sigh.
Very complete list and I would have to say that some, IMO, don't rise to the level of scandal, but many do. Congress can also share the blame in some, but ultimately, it is disturbing. In the spirit of bi-partisanship, I might try to compile some from previous administrations.
I think congress is a huge part of the problem. The last 6 years we have seen nearly zero oversight of this administration. A few token questions from Specter and Hagel, and then a quick concession.
Make no mistake about it, Steve, I am not suggesting either that Demcrats are inherently more moral or Republicans less so. I fully expect scandals from this Democratic congress. We will see sex scandals, money scandals, etc. Democrats are as vulnerable to the trappings of power as any other human.
But this particular brand of Republican has, in my estimation, combined a complete arrogance of their moral superiority with an equally complete and contradictory belief they are above the law and the process. During the last 6 years (or 10 if we want to go back to Tom Delay's self-righteous pursuit of impeachment) Republicans have almost totally betrayed the public trust to enrich Haliburton, oil companies all the while undermining everything in our social contract from the "rule of law" (so commonly quoted during Clinton, btw) and our basic sense of "checks and balances."
At some point, I hope we will get back to bickering between equally incompetent politicians. Right now, the Republicans are head and shoulders above the Dems in that regard.
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