Comments on Justice: Now For Bush Supporters Only!

I’ll give Bush a little credit for the most delicious use of the word “excessive” I’ve heard in a while. If you’re a chronically unemployed young man living off food stamps who decides to sell a rock or two of crack to get by, you could very well end up with a 10 year sentence of hard time in a state penitentiary. On the other hand, if you’re an aide/fall guy for the vice president involved in compromising national security, not to mention the welfare of a federal employee, 30 years is wholly "excessive" and you can expect to serve no sentence at all. Is a pardon far off?

It was a forgone conclusion that his fall guy would slither away too. Just remember kids: leaking information that compromises national security, especially if you’re in the employ of the White House, is perfectly ok.

Oooopsy! 30 years should be 30 months obviously.

This will surely improve his poll numbers! More brilliance from Bush's team of "advisors."

Are they trying to get him impeached?

I have no doubt Bush will get away with it- he'll probably get Libby pardoned too. There will be no impeachment, because there is no congressional will. This is the way Washington works. Bush has just upped the ante on corruption.

this was on Wiki

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

Bush denied that he had intended to make light of the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Faye_Tucker

wow....

just wow...

Libby's such a freakin' baby! Clinton's administration had cabinet members taking their own lives over stuff smaller than this.

I'm almost glad he was pardoned, it's only going to drag public opinion of Bush down even further. Even the most conservative Americans understand that this brand of justice isn't extended to them.

I'm assuming, although the prison term was commuted, a felony conviction still stands? I ask because it's typical for political insiders like Libby to "retire" to a lifetime of being bigshot corporate Board Members, which he can't do as felon.

Totally agree on the craptitude of the commutation, but I had to note this:

Meanwhile, the president-to-be sent 152 people to the death chamber during his tenure

Bush sent them to the death chamber? Or a jury of each of the accused's peers did?

a texas jury would sentence your grandma to death for jaywalking.

bush will pardon libby & you'll see him in the midst of the next GOP administration. which looks like Mitt Romney since the idiots in Iowa & NH are bent of Hildog.

Come on. This is the best news ever! It cements the link between the President and Libby's crimes. He was not acting on his own, he was acting on Bush and Cheney's orders.

And obviously this doesn't help Bush's poll numbers or what's left of his agenda. So why did he do it? Because Libby blackmailed him. Before you could speculate that Scooter had some big time dirt on Bush & Co, but what good was it to speculate? Wonder no more: now you've got your proof.

Impeachment is probably not going to happen, but commuting Libby's sentence makes it that much less far-fetched. What's not to like?

There absolutely will not be an impeachment- I can guarantee that with 98% certainty. I can't believe people still hold out for some kind of justice, as if by some miracle the Bush administration will pay the price for their misdeeds. The only justice they're going to suffer is the justice of history, and it's not like anyone actually reads that anymore- hell, in 30 years the right will have completely whitewashed even that.

Bush's foreign policy has failed utterly, but his domestic policy has been a tremendous success (not for those of us on the left of course). If the democrats had any balls they would have committed to the things they could have done: blocked Bush's supreme court nominations, blocked his appointees, including the attorney general, railroaded the war funding, etc. etc. Like these people are going to impeach him after they let him run the country into the ground over and over and over again.

I don't want to be a curmudgeon, but come on. As predictable as this is it will mean absolutely nothing. Bush will finish out his term and that will be it.

(#9)

"Impeachment is probably not going to happen, but commuting Libby's sentence makes it that much less far-fetched. What's not to like?"

Well said.

The convicts who died on death row were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

Unless there's compelling evidence, there's no reason to pardon them - in Texas or any other state.

How come ECB doesn't shed any tears for their victims?

Geeeze, you folks sure have things twisted around.

The death penalty is a barbaric practice that should be relegated to the past precisely because it makes emotion, usually of a vindictive sort the MO of the state- it's basically state run, organized lynching. Justice doesn't cry, it's not emotional. Sentences should not be decided by sobbing relatives, but by a well reasoned judgment based on empirical data (what does capital punishment actually achieve for example). The legal argument for the death penalty is founded on a bunch of shady quasi-religious reasoning. Besides, if the punishment fit the enormity of the crime, then Bush's Enron buddies would be hanging from the fucking trees.

This just in:
Bush is an asshole!

Thank you, Luke, for reminding people that the President of the United States openly mocked a condemned prisoner whose death warrant he signed.

All of those clemency dismissals were made on the basis of reports presented to Governor Bush by Alberto Gonzalez, reports which were cursory at best and outright dishonest at worst. Basically they all said "fuck this loser, juice 'im".

We have never had a more ethically clouded President.

Excellent points on Gonzales FNARF. People forget that he was Bush's gallows man.

This is a good post ECB, truly, if any state shows the unfairness of the death penalty is the lone star state, with Louisiana a closed second. Huntsville TX has killed more people than any other.

Im just curious and I am really not trying to diss your heroine. For she was one of the best governors ever. But how many people did your hero Ann Richards pardoned?

Even if you think the death penalty is the greatest thing since sliced bread, mocking the condemned is beyond the pale. It is not the action of a man who believes in or embodies civilization. It's sickening, just completely revolting.

http://www.troyanthonydavis.org/

@17 Well said, Fnarf.

W is a crook and pig but...

From Wiki:

Under state law, Texas governors do not have the power to commute death penalty sentences, only to briefly postpone an execution pending further review by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (most members of which are appointed by the governor - including the chairman, who according to the Texas Administrative Code serves "at the pleasure of the governor" (RULE §141.1)). Bowing to the reality of the pro-death penalty Texas legislature, Ann Richards was not a vocal critic of the Texas death penalty law while governor. While campaigning for governor, she was asked if she supported or opposed the death penalty. She said, "I will uphold the laws of the State of Texas." The reporter then asked, "But what would you do if the Legislature passed a bill repealing the death penalty?" to which she replied, "I would faint."

What is so damn funny about this is the fact the one power that is actually spelled out in the US Constitution that the President has he actuallyl used. And some are saying he should be impeached for it? No, he should be impeached for the crimes he has already committed. And as much as it sucks, commuting Libby's sentence is not one of those crimes.

Yes, I think that Bush/Cheney should be impeached and then convicted in the Senate. (remember the impeachment does not remove the President, it is the conviction in the Senate that does that; Clinton was impeached, just not convicted) But the only hope that we have is to get the house to impeach since that requires a simple majority to do and would at least hold some resemblance that the US Constitution matters in some small degree.

And to continue on a little Constitutional Law, the reason the President has the power or clemancy over convictions is not some strange power grab (even though in Bush's case he is using it like that) but it is a specific check on judical power. (And interestingly a carry over from the Britsh Monarchy as well). True, Bush did not do this in light of the DOJ's previously set guidelines for the excercise of the use of clemancy but then those are ONLY recomendations and are not legally binding.

What is the moral of the story you ask? The citizens of the US need to be more ACTIVE in their government and more demanding of their elected representatives. (write letters, call the White House to complain, call your representatives and yeah, find other candidates to run for office who reflect what you believe) It kills me that we are beating the dead horse of Bush's moronic leadership to death but fail to elevate the debate and our action to tangible things that will make a real difference. At the end of the day it is just the Republic that is at stake and if that is not important for us then the great experiment of the late 18th Century will have been truly in vain.

FNARF -- Bush is not ethically clouded. That's far too mild. He's ethically bankrupt.

@ 21
" The citizens of the US need to be more ACTIVE in their government and more demanding of their elected representatives"

Surely you can't believe that such things are going to do anything besides getting yourself on a no-fly list.

It's all a charade, the whole of American Politics is scripted, like some two-bit 'Reality Show'.

Sit back and enjoy it.
Your masters have much more coming.

@ Old Timer, Good point, it really is probably too late. Brutus in the Federalist debate October 1787 mentioned in his work that once people give up their freedoms they only can get it back through violent rebellion. And for those of you reading this and care, you should read the Federalist Papers and Anit-Federalist papers; the founders really did not have an issue with revolution if things get out of hand. And that is not a joke.

So the next question that needs to be asked is who are the Thomas Paine, Thomas Jeffersons and Ben Franklins of today?

@8: "a texas jury would sentence your grandma to death for jaywalking."

lol

Good post, ECB. And good point.