Bush commutes Scooter's prison termFollow

I'd only lie to you if I were a politician.

source


Whether you agree or not, that's the official release.

"I guess Totem will be happy to know that the Democratic strategy guy agrees with him even if Rush doesn't." --Jophiel

I've been validated.

/swoon

Totem

Wasn't the distinction between Clinton's pardons and Bush's one were that, a) Clinton used it somewhat frequently for a variety of people, all of whom b) Served at least some jail time before being pardoned?

Edit-Clarified post

Edited, Jul 6th 2007 3:30pm by Sopio

Most pardons come as the president has one foot out the door though. We won't know until Jan 2009.

Sure, but what's the Pope done for Bush lately?

He'll have his usual slew of crony-salvations come 2009, I'm sure. I'm not saying they'll be more than anyone else's (and certainly less than the 800-1000 number by presidents of the 40's and 50's) but they'll be there.

Yeah. "Massive". No, but... meh.As exciting as debating liberal conspiracy theories with you might be, I repeat: "Meh".

Condescending sarcasm doesn't make a good 'massive overreaction' on his part, for the record.

Secondly, I can't tell if you're talking to him as a Republican to a Democrat about Libby's pardon or a Democrat talking to a Republican circa late nineties about Clinton's affair give or take a word switch. The similarity to such an event I witnessed circa the late nineties is also scary, Gbaji.

Just an observation.

Sure. But Jophs condescending sarcasm may have the virtue of not being followed up with calls for "Impeach Bush" by Joph himself, but they *are* being followed up by those calls on the left radio and (apparently) by Dems in Congress (at least an investigation). I've heard talk of Dems wanting to Censure Bush for this act as well.

Joph can sit there and pretend that he's not on board with those calls, but it's not like he's posted any words of support for Bush's right and constitutional power to do what he did. Guilt by association I suppose, but IMO Joph's trying to play off like since he's just the one yelling "fire" he's not responsible or associated in any way to the people being trampled.

I just find it a bit disengenious. It's not like we all don't know what the "talk" is out there. It would help Joph's claim of "mehness" if he'd actually posted something about how Bush has a right to take the action he did, and the calls for impeachment, censure, and investigation are overreactions. But he didn't.



With the notable exception that back in the day I defended Clinton during the Lewinsky investigation and impeachment. Openly, publically, and on this very site (ok, it was two generations of board ago, but still).

So yeah. I do feel perfectly ok with making some assumptions about Joph's position on this if he's unwilling to openly support a president's right/power to commute a sentence in this case. The lack of "Ok. I disagree with it, but it's perfectly within his power to do so" from anyone on the Left speaks volumes, don't you think?


I do.

Lol. That is intesting. You can see the entire agenda wrapped up in this one sentence:



Bold emphasis mine of course. That's ultimately the whole point of this, right? They're pissed that no one at the white house got fired (although Libby resigned, so that should be enough pound of flesh you'd think). The whole thing is about spin and presentation. If no one gets fired/blamed or found guilty, then there was a coverup. If someone is, then it points to the corruption and general evilness of the Bush White House. It's spin either way.

I'll also point out that I've never heard Bill Clinton call for Armitage to be punished. If he feels that strongly that it's "wrong to out that CIA agent", why is he only speaking against Libby (who didn't out her). Wrong to cover it up? Um... Libby knew absolutely nothing about Armitage and his conversation with Novak, nor presumably was involved in any way with how Armitage found out about Plame's employment. How could he have possibly covered anything up?


It's abundantly obvious that Fitzgerald deliberately choose not to investigate the leak he was supposed to investigate and instead used the opportunity to go on a fishing expedition against senior white house employees. Well, he got one. Grats I guess. We can debate *why* he did this (I have my suspicions), but it's clear that he did. Why stop at Armitage? Someone told him. Someone told that person. That's the leak he was supposed to find. Why go after Libby? No reason other then that made a much more intersting target.

Then again, Clinton's administration never declared that "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." (Sept 29, 2003).

Of course, Clinton never had to furiously backpedal from that statement either when it was publically obvious that people in his administration were involved.

In all fairness, I did actually make a big deal out of the Marc Rich scandal due to the craven-beyond-belief behavior of an utterly corrupt president.

I don't dispute that presidents pardon cronies. Usually it is done under the auspices of keeping administration secrets that otherwise might not pass the test of national security or are the payoffs for doing dirty work that is marginally legit. It happens, oh well. But the sheer chutzpah of pardoning someone on the basis of money he contributed to your party-- and a tax evader to boot when your campaign platform is higher taxes to pay for all your giveaways --that takes the cake.

All in all, it was a perfect synopsis of the kind of man William Jefferson Clinton was, is, and always will be.

Totem

It's exactly relevant because the point of making a big deal about Bush's commuting of Libby's sentence is to "make the Pubbies look like sh*t for the election". The point is that the person who's the likely opponent to whomever the Pubbies put up will be Hillary Clinton.


No chance.

Don't give up the dream though.