Libby's sentance commuted

[Crazed Rabbit]

Someone (CR) mentioned that the Bush appointments for U.S. attorney positions were not based on political party.

Either you're talking about some other CR, or you can't read. Here's a bit of help:

We all know being appointed by Bush does not make one a Republican.

But I guess we can't let facts get in the way of a good rant?

Apparently Bush's dismissal of a Federal perjury sentence as "excessive" has lit up the boards across the nation, where lawyers and convicts are screaming "Me, too!"

Gee, he still can't do a thing right.

CR

[Lemur]

Yup, looks as though the fallout from the Great Leader's memo is going to be long-lasting and widespread. There would have been far less damage if he had just gone ahead and pardoned the git.

Critics of the system have a long list of complaints. Sentences, they say, are too harsh. Judges are allowed to take account of facts not proven to the jury. The defendant’s positive contributions are ignored, as is the collateral damage that imprisonment causes the families involved.

On Monday, Mr. Bush made use of every element of that critique in a detailed statement setting out his reasons for commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence — handing an unexpected gift to defense lawyers around the country, who scrambled to make use of the president’s arguments in their own cases.

Given the administration’s tough stand on sentencing, the president’s arguments left experts in sentencing law scratching their heads.

“The Bush administration, in some sense following the leads of three previous administrations, has repeatedly supported a federal sentencing system that is distinctly disrespectful of the very arguments that Bush has put forward in cutting Libby a break,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who writes the blog Sentencing Law and Policy.

Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Bush’s decision to grant a commutation rather than an outright pardon has started a national conversation about sentencing generally.

“By saying that the sentence was excessive, I wonder if he understood the ramifications of saying that,” said Ellen S. Podgor, who teaches criminal law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla. “This is opening up a can of worms about federal sentencing.”

In related news, the NeoCons certainly take care of their own. Paul Wolfowitz went straight from resigning from the World Bank in disgrace to a plum position at the American Enterprise Institute.

Wolfowitz moves to DC think tank

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer Mon Jul 2, 7:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, who resigned amid a furor over his handling of a bank pay package for his girlfriend, has joined the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, as a visiting scholar.

AEI's president, Christopher DeMuth, made the announcement Monday. Wolfowitz will work on entrepreneurship and development issues, Africa and public-private partnerships, the group said in a release.

Wolfowitz's last day as head of the World Bank, a major poverty-fighting institution, was on Saturday, ending a stormy two-year run.

He was essentially forced to step down from the World Bank after a special panel found that he broke bank rules in arranging a hefty pay raise for Shaha Riza, his girlfriend and bank employee. Wolfowitz's handling of the pay package prompted a staff revolt and calls by Europeans and others for him to resign.

Before taking over the World Bank, Wolfowitz had served as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon, where he played a key role in mapping out the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

AEI's stated mission is to "defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism." The nonprofit institution, founded in 1943, is oriented to research and education on range of government, political, economic and social issues.

President Bush, who had tapped Wolfowitz for the World Bank post, turned to Robert Zoellick to replace him.

Zoellick took over as World Bank president on Sunday. He was Bush's former top trade envoy and No. 2 diplomat at the State Department. He left the administration last year to become an executive at Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs.

[Lemur]

Even the Cato Institute is jumping into the game. Very amusing blog today:

Commute These Sentences, Mr. President

President Bush has pushed the envelope of every aspect of executive power, except for two that might ease the burden of government, the veto and the pardon. Now he’s threatening to protect the taxpayers with his veto pen, and he’s just discovered his power to pardon or commute the sentences of people convicted of crimes. Whether Scooter Libby was an appropriate recipient of a commutation is subject to much debate.

But there are plenty of other people who deserve presidential pardons or commutations. Families Against Mandatory Minimums has highlighted a number of good cases here:

Mandy Martinson — 15 years for helping her boyfriend count his drug-dealing money.

DeJarion Echols — 20 years for selling a small amount of crack and owning a gun, causing Reagan-appointed federal judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. to say, “This is one of those situations where I’d like to see a congressman sitting before me.”

Weldon Angelos — 55 years for minor marijuana and gun charges, causing the George W. Bush-appointed judge Paul Cassell, previously best known for pressing the courts to overturn the Miranda decision, to call the mandatory sentence in this case “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.”

Anthea Harris — 15 years when members of her husband’s drug ring received sentence reductions to testify against her, although she had not been directly involved in the business.

A compassionate conservative should also use the pardon power to head off the DEA’s war against doctors who help patients alleviate pain. He could start by pardoning Dr. Ronald McIver, sentenced to 30 years for prescribing Oxycontin and other drugs to patients in severe pain. Or Dr. William Hurwitz of Virginia, sentenced to 25 years but then granted a retrial, convicted again, and awaiting sentencing, which could still be 10 years.

Commute these sentences, Mr. President.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Another good article from Cato.

I'd add a pardon to that guy sentenced to death for killing someone breaking into his house.

CR

[Lemur]

The complications just keep coming.

When President Bush in granting clemency on Monday nullified the 30-month prison sentence Walton had imposed, the President said he would leave intact the part of the sentence that required two years of supervised release -- somewhat akin to probation, but not the same. But Walton on Tuesday noted that the federal law governing such a requirement states that it is to be served "after imprisonment."

The judge said in his order: "Strictly construed, the statute authorizing the imposition of supervised release indicates that such release should occur only after the defendant has already served a term of imprisonment....It is therefore unclear how [the statute] should be interpreted in unusual circumstances such as these."

Lawyers were ordered to file papers by Monday on "whether the defendant should be required to report to the Probation Office immediately, whether he should be allowed to remain free of supervision until some later, more appropriate time, or, indeed, whether the plain meaning of [the statute] precludes the application of a term of supervised release altogether now that the prison sentence has been commuted."

In other words, it's entirely possible that Libby cannot serve two years of probation without having served any time. The Decider is good at choosing interesting directions, not-so-good at consequences.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Of course no one has yet mentioned that this whole affair was in reality nothing more than a political witch hunt and Washingtons usual game of gotcha. They had to find some one guilty of something. As far as i can see his only crime was not remembering things exactly as Chris Mathews did. No one was ever found guilty of the charges that started this investigation. If he belongs in jail then Certainly Clinton and Berger along with a few 1000 other politicians do as well.

[Lemur]

As far as i can see his only crime was not remembering things exactly as Chris Mathews did. No one was ever found guilty of the charges that started this investigation.

Two thoughts, reliable defender of the powerful:

• Libby was convicted by a jury. Think you know better than them?
• As for "no one was found guilty of the charges that started the investigation," ever heard the expression that it's not the crime, it's the coverup that gets you?

[Marshal Murat]

Which jury? The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Libby was convicted by a jury. Think you know better than them?

On what charge? Did anyone get convicted of the original so called crime?

As for "no one was found guilty of the charges that started the investigation," ever heard the expression that it's not the crime, it's the coverup that gets you?

What cover up? Just for the sake of accuracy, please remember the following.

1. Valerie Plame-Wilson was NOT a covert CIA operative at the time she was "outed". Every bartender in Georgetown knew she was CIA because she told them all. Heck, she waited all the way to the third date to tell Joe she worked for the CIA. She was a desk jockey at Langley, not some deep-cover spook. She did not (and does not) meet the statutory definition and therefore could not be "outed".

2. Fitzgerald knew very early in the investigation who the original source was, and it wasn't Libby, Cheney, Rove or Bush. It was Richard Armitage, a Clinton appointee.

3. History has shown that Reagan was a lousy judge of judges. Several of his picks turned out to be ultra-liberal.

So what we have here is the ultimate political witch hunt. Fitzgerald knew very early on, long before even interviewing Libby or anyone else, that no crime had been committed and the identity of the original source. The investigation should have stopped right then and there. Fitzgerald simply kept going until he "got" someone on a pure process crime. Fitzgerald had some evidence excluded for purposes of trial that he then wanted included for purposes of sentencing. In other words, Libby got "Nifonged".

Libby was essentially convicted for having a different memory of events than Tim Russert (and it's been shown that Russert's account of events doesn't pan out).

[Tribesman]

What cover up? Just for the sake of accuracy, please remember the following.

Would you like to make that following statement actually accurate before you advise people to remember things that are not factual

[Marshal Murat]

Wall Street Journal Op.

Fitzgerald Doubles Down
Prosecutor asks for a sentence based on never-seen evidence.

Friday, June 1, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is due to be sentenced next week, and--just in time--Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided this was a leak case after all. Last week he filed a brief with the court arguing that Mr. Libby should receive a prison sentence in line with crimes that neither he nor anyone else was ever accused of committing. If the court accepts Mr. Fitzgerald's logic, the sentence meted out in this fantastic case would at least double, to a minimum of 30 months. So it goes in a case brought by an unaccountable prosecutor now requesting an unreasonable penalty based on evidence he never introduced at trial. This is America?

Throughout Mr. Libby's prosecution, Mr. Fitzgerald insisted it made no difference to the case whether CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was undercover. At one pre-trial hearing, he went so far as to argue it would make no difference to the case "if [Ms. Wilson] turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee." He also objected to defense requests for documents concerning her status, insisting this was a perjury trial, not a trial about leaking classified information.

His stonewalling on this point before the trial led the defense to seek an instruction from the judge barring the prosecution from discussing the nature of Ms. Wilson's job at the CIA. But now that the time for sentencing has come, Mr. Fitzgerald has decided that Ms. Wilson's role is relevant after all..

[Watchman]

This is America?

Sure, unless there's something wrong with my map. So's Gitmo. Isn't it exciting to have such a varied, dynamic and multifaceted legal system ?

[KukriKhan]

Sure, unless there's something wrong with my map. So's Gitmo. Isn't it exciting to have such a varied, dynamic and multifaceted legal system ?

So Gawain, since, according to you, the charges were based on false assumptions, the prosecutor was on a witch-hunt, the jury was stupid, and the judge was an automaton,

what is your take on POTUS only taking away the jail-time by commutation, rather than the full exoneration that a pardon would give? Is King George wrong too?

[Marshal Murat]

Is King George wrong too?

I thought all of them were dead....
Wait...
Why are you calling George Washington king?

Mr. Fitzgerald insisted it made no difference to the case whether CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was undercover.

So then this was about perjury. Perjury about what?

[Marshal Murat]

The CNN Op. Hypocrisy Abounds

[KukriKhan]

From Marshal Murat's article:

..."There appears to be rank hypocrisy at work here on both sides of the political spectrum," said Joe Gaylord, a GOP consultant who worked for House Speaker Newt Gingrich during impeachment. "It causes Americans to shake their heads in disgust at the political system."...

Yep. :shakes head:

[Gawain of Orkeny]

So Gawain, since, according to you, the charges were based on false assumptions, the prosecutor was on a witch-hunt, the jury was stupid, and the judge was an automaton,

Not according to me according to the facts .

Read again

Fitzgerald Doubles Down
Prosecutor asks for a sentence based on never-seen evidence.

Friday, June 1, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is due to be sentenced next week, and--just in time--Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided this was a leak case after all. Last week he filed a brief with the court arguing that Mr. Libby should receive a prison sentence in line with crimes that neither he nor anyone else was ever accused of committing. If the court accepts Mr. Fitzgerald's logic, the sentence meted out in this fantastic case would at least double, to a minimum of 30 months. So it goes in a case brought by an unaccountable prosecutor now requesting an unreasonable penalty based on evidence he never introduced at trial. This is America?

Throughout Mr. Libby's prosecution, Mr. Fitzgerald insisted it made no difference to the case whether CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was undercover. At one pre-trial hearing, he went so far as to argue it would make no difference to the case "if [Ms. Wilson] turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee." He also objected to defense requests for documents concerning her status, insisting this was a perjury trial, not a trial about leaking classified information.

His stonewalling on this point before the trial led the defense to seek an instruction from the judge barring the prosecution from discussing the nature of Ms. Wilson's job at the CIA. But now that the time for sentencing has come, Mr. Fitzgerald has decided that Ms. Wilson's role is relevant after all..

Plus the FACT that he knew on the second day who the leaker was. Come on. There is no debate to be had here.

[Lemur]

This from the man who maintains that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were honest, patriotic, misunderstood kids. I think I'll take your "there's no argument" with a small mountain of salt, thanks very much.

[KukriKhan]

Um, since I'm in the middle of this conversation, this is awkward:

please always provide linkage and attribution to quoted sources.

[Marshal Murat]

Gawain's post was from the Wall Street Journal Op.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

And if you still doubt me

Armitage leak admission creates new questions
Why did Fitzgerald continue probe if he knew where CIA leak came from?

Updated: 8:56 p.m. ET Sept 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - For three years, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew the answer to one of the biggest questions in Washington: Who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame?

Now that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged this week that he was the leaker, the new question is what Fitzgerald has been looking for during a quest that rattled the White House and sent a reporter to jail.

“What was the rationale for seeking an answer to a question he already knew the answer to?” asked Wayne Berman, a former assistant secretary of commerce and a supporter of the only person indicted in the leak case, former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Fitzgerald’s office had no response to that question Friday.

Armitage said he inadvertently revealed Plame’s job to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July 2003. That revelation came as Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Novak’s column touched off claims that the White House was behind a smear campaign, which led to a federal investigation into the leak and whether it was part of a partisan effort to undermine Wilson’s credibility.

Probe went on despite admission
Early in the inquiry, Armitage told authorities he was Novak’s source. Armitage said Fitzgerald asked him to not to say that publicly. Fitzgerald then pressed on with the investigation, questioning White House aides. Among them was top Bush adviser Karl Rove, who appeared five times before a grand jury before being cleared of wrongdoing this summer.

When Libby was indicted in October 2005 on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to investigators, Fitzgerald said Libby was the first official to discuss Plame in a conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

That’s where this week’s admission by Armitage muddles the case.

After Fitzgerald’s comment about Libby at a news conference, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward reminded Armitage that he had made a passing comment to him days before Libby’s conversation with Miller. That meant that Armitage, not Libby, had been the first to mention it to a reporter, and he quickly informed the prosecutor of that recollection.

[Lemur]

I also love how the die-hard Repubs have made this a referendum on the character of Joe Wilson, or, in a pinch, Bill Clinton. There really should be a statute of limitations for justifying the Great Leader's actions with "Clinton did it!"

Nobody wants to comment on the mess the commutation has made for thousands of other cases across our great nation? Nobody wants to talk about being tough on crime?

Oh well, let's get back to whether the right-wing blogosphere is correct in frothing about a political witch-hunt and innocents being burned at the stake. Noted left-wing hotbed of Trotskyite rabble-rousing, the Christian Science Monitor, has this to say:

In supporting Bush, these three men are aligning themselves with an action that critics say flies in the face of the president's pledge to "restore honor and dignity to the White House." Libby's felony conviction stemmed from statements he made to a federal grand jury in the course of an investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame. That leak, which neither Libby nor anyone else was charged with, stemmed from a dispute over intelligence reports that suggested Iraq was attempting to obtain materials to build weapons of mass destruction. That dispute fed into the larger debate over Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

So let's not forget that if we want to talk about what this whole ugly circus is "really" about, it's the I-word. But believe in the victimization of your cause if you must. I can't really imagine modern Republicans without a constant haze of victim rhetoric. And perma-outrage. Fortunately, the nation seems to be tiring of the dog and pony show.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I also love how the die-hard Repubs have made this a referendum on the character of Joe Wilson, or, in a pinch, Bill Clinton. There really should be a statute of limitations for justifying the Great Leader's actions with "Clinton did it!"

If anyone belongs in jail here its Wilson and Fitzgerald. Did you read my post above yours?

[Lemur]

Didn't see it before I posted, sorry, Gawain. My take on the situation is that Fitzgerald was digging, Libby knew exactly what was going on (i.e., Rove and Cheney ordering the spread of info), Libby stonewalled and lied, Fitzgerald knew darn well that Libby was doing so, and so he used the oldest prosecutor's trick in the book: Talk or I'm sending you to jail.

Libby probably made a deal with the Administration that if he saw the inside of a jail cell, he would talk, but otherwise he would stay silent. Fitzgerald pressed ahead with perjury/obstruction of justice. Seems likely the evidence was good, 'cause twelve people who looked at everything the defense and prosecution put forward agreed unanimously, and a Republican judge gave Libby a no-kidding sentence.

Libby supporters mentioned that he could have called Dick Cheney to testify in his defense, and that he should have done so. A White House staffer said that Bush didn't want to take action "until he had to."

That's my take, and it doesn't require that every player be an idiot, a saint or an evildoer. Your version of events sounds rather more extreme.

-edit-

And if I may drive a final nail in the coffin of the claim that Libby's sentence was "excessive," somebody finally did the math and research:

Federal court records indicate that 382 people were convicted for obstruction of justice over the past two years. Three of four were sent to prison. The average prison term was 64 months, more than five years. The largest group of defendants drew prison terms ranging from 13 months to 31 months.

"This is sort of a standard sentence in that situation," said defense attorney Mark H. Tuohey. "Call it what you want, but that's what it is. This was not some out-of-the-blue-sentence."

[Tribesman]

Not according to me according to the facts .

Pure unadulterated bollox .
read what you wrote following this line.....

What cover up? Just for the sake of accuracy, please remember the following.

.....then pick out the bits that are true and seperate them from those that are not true .
When you remove all the tripe that is not true then you have something that might be able to be called factual , until then it is pure rubbish which are you calling "facts" .

[Lemur]

Wow, the White House is now claiming that Libby's connections and friends had nothing, nothing to do with the commutation. President Bush acted out of principle, don't'cha know.

Instead, he did what he does normally, and what makes those of us who work for him proud. He proceeded on the basis of principle, and arrived at a sound and just decision — knowing he would take hits in the court of public opinion, but also knowing he was doing the right thing.

Unbelievable. The Atlantic has a devastating article about the President's history of executive clemency and mercy. (Hint: there is none.)

On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George W. Bush signed his name to a confidential three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight months since Bush had been sworn in. In this case Bush's signature led, shortly after 6:00 P.M. on the very same day, to the execution of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded thirty-three-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.

Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.

A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.

For those on the right who are howling about injustice, let me say for the record that I would much rather have Fitzgerald coming after me for perjury than have Gonzales writing a memo to Bush about whether I should die.

-edit-

Brilliant quote from today's press conference sums it all up:

Q: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

MR. STANZEL: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by "equal justice under the law."

[HoreTore]

I think Pape raises an excellent question. If the power to pardon (and commute, of course, Dave) is universally acknowledged to be abused by second-term Presidents, how could we check or balance that power without unduly weakening the Executive? How do we create a structural impediment to abuse?

And Dave, just out of curiosity, how would a "frenzy" derail "ignorant ravings"? I'm having a hard time picturing this ...

One word: Monarchy!

In my opinion, the power to pardon people should be there, but it should be completely separate from any political power. This is where our monarchies get useful, they can fill that role very nicely. In your case, the best you can hope for would be some super-supreme court/judge I guess...

[Watchman]

Not a few systems have that post filled with a politically powerless President...

[Marshal Murat]

Two wrongs don't make it right.

Is that the correct logical fallacy for the Bush vs. Clinton arguments?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

My take on the situation is that Fitzgerald was digging, Libby knew exactly what was going on (i.e., Rove and Cheney ordering the spread of info), Libby stonewalled and lied, Fitzgerald knew darn well that Libby was doing so, and so he used the oldest prosecutor's trick in the book: Talk or I'm sending you to jail.

Your take is obviously so wrong. Armitage was the leaker case closed. No crime nothing to investigate. Wilson lied about everything. How can you deny it? He doesnt. You got one thing right. He was digging alright.

.then pick out the bits that are true and seperate them from those that are not true .

What was true? That there never should have been an investigation?