Crime and non-punishment
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
07/04/07
In commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence so that the vice president’s former chief of staff won’t spend a minute in jail, the president is sending a message, one that, while going out to multiple recipients, consists of a sentiment succinctly summed up in two words: Screw you! The first recipient is the general public, which is being disabused of the notion that America is a country without an aristocracy. … While the rest of us — the serfs — are at the mercy of such laws as the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the extensive surveillance and snooping authorized by a Congress that has betrayed its constitutional mandate, our rulers — and especially the philosopher-kings of the neoconservative sect — are exempt...
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11236
The quality of mercy is strained
Slate
by Harlan J. Protass
07/03/07
What’s stunning about President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence, if you’re a criminal defense lawyer, isn’t that it was politically motivated. Or that it tramples on principles of equal justice. Or even that it is the latest in a long string of Bush administration assaults on the rule of law. Rather, what’s astonishing is that the factors Bush relied on in commuting Libby’s sentence are the same ones that the administration has aggressively sought to preclude judges from considering when imposing sentences on everyone else...
http://www.slate.com/id/2169792/
Why did Bush commute Scooter Libby’s sentence?
Mother Jones
by Clara Jeffery
07/02/07
Bush’s approval ratings are in the toilet. And there’s no good news for the GOP in sight. So why would the president decide to commute the sentence of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury, and making false statements in the Plamegate affair, now and not at the end of his term, when everybody expected it? After all a Cable News Network/Opinion Research survey conducted after Libby’s March 6 conviction found that 69% of voters are against a pardon (though commuting is only perhaps a first step toward that); only 18% were in favor of a pardon. The answer seems to be that the base demanded it...
http://tinyurl.com/2txs3c
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Libby
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=commute
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Military+Commissions+Act
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=surveillance
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Valerie+Plame
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/justin
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Clara+Jeffery
by Justin Raimondo
07/04/07
In commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence so that the vice president’s former chief of staff won’t spend a minute in jail, the president is sending a message, one that, while going out to multiple recipients, consists of a sentiment succinctly summed up in two words: Screw you! The first recipient is the general public, which is being disabused of the notion that America is a country without an aristocracy. … While the rest of us — the serfs — are at the mercy of such laws as the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the extensive surveillance and snooping authorized by a Congress that has betrayed its constitutional mandate, our rulers — and especially the philosopher-kings of the neoconservative sect — are exempt...
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11236
The quality of mercy is strained
Slate
by Harlan J. Protass
07/03/07
What’s stunning about President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence, if you’re a criminal defense lawyer, isn’t that it was politically motivated. Or that it tramples on principles of equal justice. Or even that it is the latest in a long string of Bush administration assaults on the rule of law. Rather, what’s astonishing is that the factors Bush relied on in commuting Libby’s sentence are the same ones that the administration has aggressively sought to preclude judges from considering when imposing sentences on everyone else...
http://www.slate.com/id/2169792/
Why did Bush commute Scooter Libby’s sentence?
Mother Jones
by Clara Jeffery
07/02/07
Bush’s approval ratings are in the toilet. And there’s no good news for the GOP in sight. So why would the president decide to commute the sentence of I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury, and making false statements in the Plamegate affair, now and not at the end of his term, when everybody expected it? After all a Cable News Network/Opinion Research survey conducted after Libby’s March 6 conviction found that 69% of voters are against a pardon (though commuting is only perhaps a first step toward that); only 18% were in favor of a pardon. The answer seems to be that the base demanded it...
http://tinyurl.com/2txs3c
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Libby
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=commute
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Military+Commissions+Act
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=surveillance
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=GOP
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Valerie+Plame
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/justin
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Clara+Jeffery
rudkla - 5. Jul, 12:08
