The AP reported today that President Bush commuted the prison portion of Scooter Libby's sentence. It's about time.
President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak investigation Monday, delivering a political thunderbolt in the highly charged criminal case. Bush said the sentence was just too harsh.
Bush's move came just five hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term. That meant Libby was likely to have to report soon, and it put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
Bush's decision enraged Democrats and cheered conservatives — though some of the latter wished Bush had granted a full pardon.
"Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's decision showed the president "condones criminal conduct."
No, condoning criminal conduct is what Democrats do.
On the last day of our vacation in West Texas, my mom, my sister, and I had dinner at Pizza Hut, where the placemats had games for kids to play. We played them. One of the games was several questions to discuss, and the question that I noticed was the President for a Day question. What would you do in your one day as President?
Of course, Build the Fence came to mind, but there's not much a president can do about that in only one day. So my answer was that I'd pardon Scooter Libby (President Bush did half of that today), and then I'd pardon Border Patrol agents Compean and Ramos, who are in prison for doing their jobs. And I'd pardon any other Border Patrol agents suffering similar fates, especially if their imprisonments came as a result of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton.
I'm just glad President Bush finally took a few minutes to do at least some of what he should have done well before now.
2 comments:
I think Mr Fitzgerald-Nifong, who knew there was no crime committed long before he indicted Libby... Should be investigated for obstruction of justice and wrongful frivelous prosecution.
Then Bush had better get ready to pardon Fitzgerald, too -- or have him killed -- because I'm sure Fitz found out a lot of dirt about Dubya that he wouldn't want to have leaked.
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