Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
it is pretty clear that the right's talkingpoints on this are not far from the line the administration has followed: not thinking there was a crime involved in compromising plame because--of course--the partisan interests of the bush administration and the obligations they recognize in the exercise of power are the same. so because the bush people felt themselves justified in what they did, it was justified so far as the conservative set is concerned as well (all these heroic individual conservatives have come to the same view in the same language at the same time--my god, what a convergence...)
so libby can at once be a participant in the outing and obstruction of justice AND be the administration's designated fall guy.
this seems the logic of the communtation as well--as fall guy, there is no reason for jail--as actor, there are consequences for the moment.
personally, i expect a quiet full pardon will be granted libby at some point, when there are distractions on other fronts maybe.
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<b>The democrats from time, to time....will sodomize "we the people"...but at least they'll use vaseline.....</b>
Bush came out of nowhere to eliminate Scooter's sentence, because he said that he thought it was excessive. How does that interest and action related to Libby's sentence, square with Bush's prior record in such matters?
Quote:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsid...ese-.html#more
Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Other?
by hilzoy
So I asked myself: self, if George W. Bush is so worried about excessive sentences, how has he acted in previous cases in which a sentence might seem excessive? Herewith, some examples, which I'll put below the fold. Here's the short version: Serving twelve years for a rape that DNA testing shows you didn't commit does not get you a pardon. Being represented by a lawyer who slept through large chunks of the trial does not get you a pardon. Being convicted of murder in proceedings that a court-appointed special master describes as ""a breakdown of the adversarial process" caused by the incompetence of your lawyer does not get you a pardon, even when someone else confesses on tape to the murder you were convicted of. Likewise, when someone else confesses to the murder you were convicted of and you ask for a stay of execution in order to conduct tests that will establish your innocence, no dice. And when you are unquestionably incompetent to assist in your own defense but no one seems to take that fact into account, or tells the jury, that's just too bad. None of these sentences are in any way excessive, as far as George W. Bush is concerned.
But when you are Scooter Libby, convicted of four felony charges, and you face thirty months in jail, that's excessive.
If anyone wants to do their part to reduce sentences that really are excessive, you can make a contribution to the Innocence <a href="https://secure.ga6.org/08/donatenow">Project here></a>, and think of Scooter while you give.
(1) <a href="http://www2.bc.edu/~sydnor/6.html#_ftnref21">Kevin Byrd</a>: convicted of rape, spent twelve years in prison, cleared by DNA, not pardoned.....
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...read the rest, if you can control your sense of outrage and your wonder that one man could be such a liar and a hypocrite...and still not have been impeached....or even hold the office, in the first place....
,,,and then, ask your self...why did Bush bother to give us such feeble and hypcritical justification for freeing Libby? Did Bush's decision and explanation measure up more to the respect that we all were shown by this:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/18/op...&ex=1183521600
February 18, 2001
My Reasons for the Pardons
By WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — Because of the intense scrutiny and criticism of the pardons of Marc Rich and his partner Pincus Green and because legitimate concerns have been raised, I want to explain what I did and why.
First, I want to make some general comments about pardons and commutations of sentences. Article II of the Constitution gives the president broad and unreviewable power to grant "Reprieves and Pardons" for all offenses against the United States. The Supreme Court has ruled that the pardon power is granted "[t]o the [president] . . ., and it is granted without limit" (United States v. Klein). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that "[a] pardon . . . is . . . the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by [the pardon] . . ." (Biddle v. Perovich). A president may conclude a pardon or commutation is warranted for several reasons: the desire to restore full citizenship rights, including voting, to people who have served their sentences and lived within the law since; a belief that a sentence was excessive or unjust; personal circumstances that warrant compassion; or other unique circumstances.
The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial. The reason the framers of our Constitution vested this broad power in the Executive Branch was to assure that the president would have the freedom to do what he deemed to be the right thing, regardless of how unpopular a decision might be. Some of the uses of the power have been extremely controversial, such as President Washington's pardons of leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, President Harding's commutation of the sentence of Eugene Debs, President Nixon's commutation of the sentence of James Hoffa, President Ford's pardon of former President Nixon, President Carter's pardon of Vietnam War draft resisters, and President Bush's 1992 pardon of six Iran-contra defendants, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger, which assured the end of that investigation.
On Jan. 20, 2001, I granted 140 pardons and issued 36 commutations. During my presidency, I issued a total of approximately 450 pardons and commutations, compared to 406 issued by President Reagan during his two terms. During his four years, President Carter issued 566 pardons and commutations, while in the same length of time President Bush granted 77. President Ford issued 409 during the slightly more than two years he was president.
The vast majority of my Jan. 20 pardons and reprieves went to people who are not well known. Some had been sentenced pursuant to mandatory-sentencing drug laws, and I felt that they had served long enough, given the particular circumstances of the individual cases. Many of these were first-time nonviolent offenders with no previous criminal records; in some cases, codefendants had received significantly shorter sentences. At the attorney general's request, I commuted one death sentence because the defendant's principal accuser later changed his testimony, casting doubt on the defendant's guilt. In some cases, I granted pardons because I felt the individuals had been unfairly treated and punished pursuant to the Independent Counsel statute then in existence. The remainder of the pardons and commutations were granted for a wide variety of fact-based reasons, but the common denominator was that the cases, like that of Patricia Hearst, seemed to me deserving of executive clemency. Overwhelmingly, the pardons went to people who had been convicted and served their time, so the impact of the pardon was principally to restore the person's civil rights. Many of these, including some of the more controversial, had vigorous bipartisan support.
The pardons that have attracted the most criticism have been the pardons of Marc Rich and Pincus Green, who were indicted in 1983 on charges of racketeering and mail and wire fraud, arising out of their oil business.
Ordinarily, I would have denied pardons in this case simply because these men did not return to the United States to face the charges against them. However, I decided to grant the pardons in this unusual case for the following legal and foreign policy reasons: (1) I understood that the other oil companies that had structured transactions like those on which Mr. Rich and Mr. Green were indicted were instead sued civilly by the government; (2) I was informed that, in 1985, in a related case against a trading partner of Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, the Energy Department, which was responsible for enforcing the governing law, found that the manner in which the Rich/Green companies had accounted for these transactions was proper; (3) two highly regarded tax experts, Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center, reviewed the transactions in question and concluded that the companies "were correct in their U.S. income tax treatment of all the items in question, and [that] there was no unreported federal income or additional tax liability attributable to any of the [challenged] transactions"; (4) in order to settle the government's case against them, the two men's companies had paid approximately $200 million in fines, penalties and taxes, most of which might not even have been warranted under the Wolfman/Ginsburg analysis that the companies had followed the law and correctly reported their income; (5) the Justice Department in 1989 rejected the use of racketeering statutes in tax cases like this one, a position that The Wall Street Journal editorial page, among others, agreed with at the time; (6) it was my understanding that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's position on the pardon application was "neutral, leaning for"; (7) the case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff; (8) finally, and importantly, many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr. Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank.
While I was troubled by the criminalization of the charges against Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, I also wanted to assure the government's ability to pursue any Energy Department, civil tax or other charges that might be available and warranted. I knew the men's companies had settled their disputes with the government, but I did not know what personal liability the individuals might still have for Energy Department or other violations.
Therefore, I required them to waive any and all defenses, including their statute of limitations defenses, to any civil charge the government might bring against them. Before I granted the pardons, I received from their lawyer a letter confirming that they "waive any and all defenses which could be raised to the lawful imposition of civil fines or penalties in connection with the actions and transactions alleged in the indictment against them pending in the Southern District of New York."
I believe my pardon decision was in the best interests of justice. If the two men were wrongly indicted in the first place, justice has been done. On the other hand, if they do personally owe money for Energy Department penalties, unpaid taxes or civil fines, they can now be sued civilly, as others in their position apparently were, a result that might not have been possible without the waiver, because civil statutes of limitations may have run while they were out of the United States.
While I was aware of and took into account the fact that the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York did not support these pardons, in retrospect, the process would have been better served had I sought her views directly. Further, I regret that Mr. Holder did not have more time to review the case. However, I believed the essential facts were before me, and I felt the foreign policy considerations and the legal arguments justified moving forward.
The suggestion that I granted the pardons because Mr. Rich's former wife, Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton library foundation is utterly false. There was absolutely no quid pro quo. Indeed, other friends and financial supporters sought pardons in cases which, after careful consideration based on the information available to me, I determined I could not grant.
In the last few months of my term, many, many people called, wrote or came up to me asking that I grant or at least consider granting clemency in various cases. These people included friends, family members, former spouses of applicants, supporters, acquaintances, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, journalists and total strangers. I believe that the president can and should listen to such requests, although they cannot determine his decision on the merits. There is only one prohibition: there can be no quid pro quo. And there certainly was not in this or any of the other pardons and commutations I granted.
I am accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics, but the accusations made against me in this case have been particularly painful because for eight years I worked hard to make good decisions for the American people. I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it.
William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.
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....or...were we shown more respect by not being told anything?
Quote:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonop5.htm
Keys to Clemency Reform: Knowledge, Transparency
Professor P.S. Ruckman, Jr.
Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois
.......Put simply, none of us has comprehensive knowledge of who in American history received a Presidential pardon, for what, or when. Suppose, as a test, one wants to find the names of those pardoned by Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Reagan. All of Washington's hand-written clemency warrants are on microfilm these days. All of Lincoln's hand-written warrants are on microfilm. <h3>There is no public list for Ronald Reagan, microfilmed or not</h3>...........
Quote:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20040430/index.htm
For release 30 April 2004
ARCHIVE, HISTORIANS ASK JUDGE TO RETHINK DISMISSAL,
PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT CASE STILL NOT RESOLVED;
NEW BUSH ORDER ADDS 140 DAYS TO PROCESSING TIME;
JUDGE RECOGNIZED INJURY BUT THOUGHT IT MOOT.
Washington, D.C., April 30 - A federal judge's dismissal last month of a landmark open government case was based on two factual misconceptions and deserves re-opening, according to court filings last week. The lawsuit challenges <h3>President Bush's Executive Order 13,233 that gave former Presidents and their heirs (as well as former Vice-Presidents for the first time)</h3> indefinite authority to hold up release of White House records...
..............Background
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA) emerged from the scandals of the Nixon presidency to require former presidents to release their records no later than 12 years after they leave office. Under the PRA, as amended, the U.S. government asserts complete "ownership, possession, and control" of all Presidential and Vice-Presidential records. Upon conclusion of the President's term in office, the National Archivist is required to assume custody of the records, and to make them available to the public when permissible under the PRA. Access to the records can be denied after the end of the 12-year embargo only if a former or incumbent president claims an exemption based on a "constitutionally based" executive privilege or continuing national security concern.
On February 8, 2001, shortly after President Bush came into office, he was notified of a scheduled release of Reagan presidential records (68,000 pages of records). His legal counsel requested two successive 90-day extensions of time to review the records prior to their release followed by a third request for an indefinite extension of time so that the White House could evaluate the legal framework and process that would govern release of the records. This was followed on November 1, 2001 with the issuance of Executive Order (E.O. 13,233) that gives the White House and former presidents uncontrolled discretion in deciding whether to deny the release of documents requested by journalists and scholars.
On November 28, 2001, the Archive and other plaintiffs filed suit to stop implementation of E.O. 13,233. The parties' dispositive motions were fully briefed by March 2002. During the pendency of the law suit, most pages of the initial 68,000 were reviewed by the administration and released, with an additional 74 pages being barred from release by an assertion of constitutional privilege over those pages by the Bush Administration. But, in the intervening two years, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Vanderbilt University professor Hugh Davis Graham, died while waiting for access to the Reagan era records on domestic policy.
On March 29, 2004, the court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds. The District Court mistakenly believed that the original 68,000 pages of records scheduled for release constituted the complete collection of Reagan presidential records subject to the Executive Order and that the plaintiffs do not dispute the assertion of constitutional privilege over the 74 pages that continue to be withheld.
<h3>.....Among the records withheld: a six-page 8 December 1986 memo to the President and Director of Public Affairs entitled, "Talking Points on Iran/Contra Affairs"; a series of memos dated 22 November and 1 December 1988 for the President entitled, "Pardon for Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Joseph Fernandez"</h3>; and a two-page memo for the President from the Attorney General, "Appeal of the Decision Denying the Enforcement of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987." Other withheld memos relate to the release of Justice Rehnquist's papers and materials relating to "Use of Military Aircraft by Mrs. Reagan."......
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Quote:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...6/ai_n13899878
Man Reagan pardoned is murder suspect
Chicago Sun-Times, Feb 26, 2001
HILLSBORO, Ore. A man accused of killing his wife and dismembering and burning her body had once received a pardon from former President Ronald Reagan.
Robert Wendell Walker Jr., 53, was arrested and accused of killing his wife. He is in jail awaiting trial in May.
When he was 21, Walker tried to rob a Portland bank. He surrendered and was sentenced to five years on probation.
Reagan granted him a pardon in 1981 for the conviction. In 1977, Oregon Gov. Bob Straub had pardoned him for two shoplifting convictions.
<h3>It is unknown why Reagan granted the pardon</h3>, one of 393 he granted during his eight years in office.....
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