FREE SCOOTER MANDELA, TAKE 2

I hope you didn't think I was kidding last night when I mentioned that the Inside the Beltway powerbrokers-- mostly from the NeoCon and wingnut sectors but really across the board (see Carville letter to Judge Walton)-- would try turning Irving Libby (AKA- "Scooter"), a pedophile pornographer who was convicted by a jury of his peers-- and who had a level of legal representation to defend him that is unavailable to 99.9% of his fellow criminals, into St Scooter and DEMAND that Bush pardon him. The well-orchestrated campaign is already in full swing.

Although Peter Baker, in today's Washington Post claims that a pardon is a topic too sensitive to mention in the West Wing, there is no doubt that the fix is long in and that this kind of article from the Post is part of their preordained role in thwarting Justice for someone who is, after all, one of them, not one of us.

The sentence imposed on former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby yesterday put President Bush in the position of making a decision he has tried to avoid for months: Trigger a fresh political storm by pardoning a convicted perjurer or let one of the early architects of his administration head to prison.
The prospect of a pardon has become so sensitive inside the West Wing that top aides have been kept out of the loop, and even Bush friends have been told not to bring it up with the president. In any debate, officials expect Vice President Cheney to favor a pardon, while other aides worry about the political consequences of stepping into a case that stems from the origins of the Iraq war and renewing questions about the truthfulness of the Bush administration.

Bush as victim instead of Bush Regime working overtime to undermine Prosecutor Fitzgerald's strategy of forcing cooperation out of the man who could implicate Cheney in treason. The Right wing and NeoCon media is framing the debate in their own perverted way. The Weekly Standard: "So much for loyalty, or decency, or courage. For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage -- well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?"

Hard to imagine that the issue of "respect" for the most hated man in the world, and the national embarrassment known as The Worst President in History, comes up when it comes to getting a traitor and convicted criminal like Libby skirt the law-- not just so he doesn't have to be punished for his crimes, but so that he doesn't feel compelled to rat out Cheney, the man who sent him to do his foul deeds. This morning's far right National Review is demanding, predictably, that Bush Pardon Him-- and, for important to those scurrying to protect Cheney, "and do it now." The far right's re-writing of history-- the talking points they have created for the cretins who get their daily dose of gospel from the Limbaughs and Coulters and Hannitys and O'Reillys (then distilled down to the hapless shills on CNN and the rest of the mainstream media):

* Fitz "never found enough evidence to charge Libby or anyone else with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act"
* Why didn't Armitage get prosecuted if there was a real crime?
* Their was no legitimacy in even having a special prosecutor (or, as the editors of the National Review put it: "The fact that there was a special prosecutor at all was more the result of bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice in the Bush administration than of any wrongdoing by Libby or the others who were investigated."
* "The discrepancies between Libby’s grand-jury testimony and that of the journalists who contradicted him can be explained by differences in memory, and should not have resulted in perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Libby. Anyone who watched Libby’s trial knows it was a parade of conflicting memories, and reasonable people could disagree with the jury’s verdict."
* "Fitzgerald's deplorable behavior"

I would bet that Fitzgerald is probably one of the most respected and well-liked public figures in America, despite the orchestrated smear campaign against him, and that he is admired by at least 2 or 3 times more Americans than anyone inside the Bush Regime or any of their high profile enablers-- like the editors of the National Review outside it. Those editors close their whiny pseudo-intellectual lament with something you will hear all over Hate Talk Radio for the next week:

All of this might be funny if it weren’t so serious for Libby. He is a dedicated public servant caught in a crazy political fight that should have never happened, convicted of lying about a crime that the prosecutor can’t even prove was committed. President Bush has the power to end this ridiculous saga right now. He should do so.

What Bush should do now, is resign in shame and admit that his regime has been a criminal enterprise from the first days of election theft and that they dragged this country into an historically disastrous war for their own shameful and craven purposes. At least that Post is honest enough to point out to the readers who get to the end of their story that "if Bush were to decide to pardon Libby, he would have to short-circuit the normal process. Under Justice Department guidelines, Libby would not qualify for a pardon. The guidelines require applicants to wait at least five years after being released from prison. The review process after the submission of an application typically can take two years before a decision is made. During more than six years in office, Bush has pardoned just 113 people, nearly a modern low, and never anyone who had not yet completed his sentence. He has commuted three sentences." One caveat, of course, one that predicts with great accuracy the outcome of all this: "The president's power to pardon federal crimes under Article II of the Constitution is essentially unrestricted, so he can ignore the guidelines." And, no doubt, he will.