Likes Scooter Libby’s commutation – Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle:
OK. I’M GLAD President Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence of Scooter Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Like Bush, I buy the jury’s verdict that Libby committed perjury and obstructed justice in a Department of Justice probe to discover who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Perjury is no small crime and Libby could have spared himself a long legal ordeal, if only he had not lied to investigators. Libby made his own bed.
That said, Libby’s prosecution has seemed overwrought and overly political from the beginning. Note that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald never prosecuted Richard Armitage, who originally leaked the operative’s identity. Read Libby’s Independence Day
Hate it from Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial board:
President Bush’s commutation of a pal’s prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system. It’s the latest sign of the huge repairs to American concepts of the rule of law that await the next president.
The president on Monday commuted the 2 1/2-year prison term awaiting Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying to investigators about a 2003 leak of CIA official Valerie Plame’s identity.
The commutation illustrates a profoundly dispiriting and unshakable aspect of the administration. The president and Vice President Dick Cheney see themselves and their cohorts as above traditional concepts of legal and constitutional constraints on their conduct in office. Read Scooter Libby: Justice in disrepair
What do you think?