Libby's sentance commuted

[Crazed Rabbit]

All you guys ranting on about this are aware Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine, right?

"Saying the wrong thing" is an exceptionally polite way of describing stonewalling a prosecutor who's looking at your boss.

Armitage was the source of the leak; he wasn't Libby's boss. And if Fitz was able to prove Libby lied, then he should have been able to prove whatever it was that Libby was hiding, right? And yet he hasn't gone after anyone else.

I'm not saying that juries are infallible, but for Pete's sake, there were multiple levels of the justice system that touched on this case.

As in The Thin Blue Line case. Keno v New London went all the way to the Supremes who made the wrong choice.

CR

[Lemur]

All you guys ranting on about this are aware Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine, right?

Not anymore he doesn't. It's good to have friends.

Armitage was the source of the leak; he wasn't Libby's boss.

Armitage was not the only source of the leak. Early on, Novak countered criticism by stating that he had multiple sources for the Plame info. Multiple sources. Cheney's office pimped the intel to every reporter with a cell phone. Nobody has seriously disputed that.

And if Fitz was able to prove Libby lied, then he should have been able to prove whatever it was that Libby was hiding, right? And yet he hasn't gone after anyone else.

You're saying that if a prosecutor cannot prove the primary crime, then no related convictions should take place? By this logic, the accountant who successfully blocks a prosecution of a drug dealer should walk free, even if there's clear evidence that he stonewalled or lied. Interesting perspective.

Noted bastion of left-wing extremism, The Economist, has a rather good summation of the mess:

Mr Bush's action serves to remind people of three of his weaknesses. One of them is his tendency towards cronyism, which led him to appoint a wholly unqualified friend to run the government's disaster-relief agency. The consequences were disastrously manifest during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Other examples include his failed attempt to appoint his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. A second flaw is the hold that Mr Cheney appears to have over the man who is nominally his boss. The past few days have seen a series of articles in the Washington Post detailing the extent to which Mr Cheney has talked Mr Bush into bypassing all normal channels of debate to take questionable decisions.

A third effect of the decision, and perhaps the most serious, is that it reinforces the perception that Mr Bush sees himself and his cronies as above the law. Sometimes he has made this explicit, attaching “signing statements” to hundreds of bills sent to him by Congress asserting his right to interpret those bills as he deems fit. Sometimes he has done so covertly, wire-tapping Americans with no authorisation or permitting the use of torture with consequences felt at Abu Ghraib and in secret CIA prisons in black holes like Uzbekistan.

Perhaps, in the end, Mr Bush's decision came down to a simple calculation that he has little left to lose. He is not seeking re-election, his approval ratings can barely go any lower, and any hopes for legacy-polishing bipartisan co-operation with Congress seem to have evaporated. So why should Mr Bush not please his few remaining friends and placate his vice-president by springing the loyal Mr Libby? It makes a kind of sense, but a deeply troubling one. What else, one wonders, might so isolated a president do before he goes?