Redstate

Posted at 5:10pm on Jul. 20, 2007 Mr. (acting) President, Pardon This Man!

By Jeff Emanuel

It's just a thought -- but, via the 25th Amendment, Acting President Cheney would be within his Constitutional bounds to issue a full pardon of his Chief of Staff Scooter Libby tomorrow...wouldn't he?

Posted in Cheney | Law | Scooter Libby — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 7:15am on Mar. 8, 2007 Should He Be Pardoned?

I'm Undecided

By Erick

With apologies to the Washington Post radio network, which thought I was going to come on and be rabidly for a pardon this morning, I'm actually undecided in whether Scooter Libby should be pardoned.

Let's be clear here. Libby was not convicted of outing Valerie Plame. In fact, I do feel strongly that he got a raw deal. Libby was not charged with or convicted of anything related to the actual purpose of the investigation. It's pretty clear now that not only was it Richard Armitage who outed Plame, but Patrick Fitzgerald knew it within a couple of weeks of the investigation and knew it was not a crime.

Fitzgerald has gotten hell from conservatives over his handling of the investigation. I think some of that is fair because he pretty much knew everything he was charged with finding out, yet kept the investigation alive long enough to get a scalp. But I do not think he had partisan motivations and can't bring myself to go all "Clinton Machine" on him.

Despite people's trouble with Fitzgerald, a jury of twelve eleven decided Libby lied to a grand jury. We treated perjury seriously with Bill Clinton, so why not now? I know the difference was that Clinton was obstructing an individual's civil recourse against him and Libby did not -- again, Fitzgerald already knew the facts about who outed Plame and that it was not a crime.

So, while I lean toward a pardon, I'm undecided. Feel free to convince me.

Posted in Law | Scooter Libby — Comments (68)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:28am on Mar. 7, 2007 Finding Libby Guilty

Joe and Val Ride Scooter

By California Yankee

A federal jury convicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby of obstruction, perjury, and lying to the FBI in the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity.

The conviction of the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney is almost all there is to show after Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent two years and more than $1.5 million investigating the 2003 leak of the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The total reported cost of the investigation would be much greater, but the bean counters didn't include the salaries of FBI agents doing all the investigation's leg work

Plame is the wife of Bush administration critic, career diplomat, senior director for Africa policy for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, and one-time official in John Kerry's failed presidential campaign.

The Wilsons complained that Plame's identity as a CIA agent was made public in retribution for the opinion piece Joe Wilson wrote for the New York Times in July 2003, nearly three months after the fall of Baghdad. In the Times article, Wilson complained that, on behalf of the CIA, he investigated and found "highly doubtful" the report that Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa in 2002. The famous sixteen words mentioned by President Bush in the 2003 State of the Union address. Thus started often refuted but never ending lie that we were "misled" into the War in Iraq.

Read on...

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Posted at 10:01pm on Mar. 6, 2007 Fitzmas

It's like Christmas, but with more hypocrisy

By Leon H Wolf

Today, after over three long years, the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald finally came to fruition. The end result: former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby has been found guilty of four of the five counts upon which he was indicted, including obstruction of justice and making false statements. These are legitimate charges; even if Libby was not guilty of any underlying crime, that does not excuse either obstructing justice or lying to federal investigators, especially when the Fifth Amendment places the burden upon the government to make their case without any help from the defendant whatsoever. Nevertheless, it is probably worthwhile to re-examine the events which led to today's conviction. The final conclusion is this: Scooter Libby was found guilty of lying today because of the spectacular trail of lies left by Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Although it has been just over two years, it seems like an eternity ago that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report examined the claims of Joe Wilson and found them to be nothing more than pack of fairy tales, shocking in their mendacity. The report was so damning that the "right wing rag" Washington Post issued an article which fairly dripped of contempt for Wilson, and outlined the numerous ways in which Joe Wilson had lied to everyone; including the Washington Post.

More below...

Posted in Breaking News | Fitzmas | Joseph Wilson | Scooter Libby | Valerie Plame — Comments (158)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:56pm on Mar. 6, 2007 Sentence Libby to serve 2 years as President like last convicted perjurer

By gamecock

Promoted from diaries by Mark I. and Jeff Emanuel

Today’s verdicts finding Scooter Libby guilty of perjury is a travesty of justice as was the whole prosecution. Libby was the Chief of Staff for Vice-President Dick Cheney before he was indicted for perjury.

From the decision to appoint a special prosecutor due solely to press demands on behalf of a CIA employee who long ago was “outed” by her Husband and D.C. cocktail parties through Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s decision to set up Libby for today’s events after he learned that Libby was not guilty of outing a CIA agent and that the State Department’s Richard Armitage was the person that outed Joe Clinton-Kerry lackey Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame. Wilson had named his wife in Who’s Who, but other than that and the cocktail parties, she was in deep cover. Right. She was also more than five years removed from security work that implicates the law protecting identities of agents.

Read on . . .

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Posted at 3:36pm on Mar. 6, 2007 Merry Fitzmas: Libby convicted on 4 of 5 counts

By Mark Kilmer

I'll break out my old Band Aid record:

Seriously, Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to the Veep, was found guilty four of five counts, but not before the jury had the opportunity to ask one last stupid question:

The jury late on Monday asked whether prosecutors were trying to prove that Libby lied to an FBI agent about his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper, as the indictment says.

Well, it's what the indictment says. I'm not an attorney, but it seems that prosecutors try to prove what is charged in the indictment.

Read More…

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Posted at 1:34pm on Mar. 6, 2007 Libby Guilty

By Erick

Four of the five counts. Obviously, he'll appeal. The media is speculating that this might embolden Peter Fitzgerald to now investigate others, but I suspect that will not be the case.

UPDATE (by Dan McLaughlin):

But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!

He stared down in Nutroots!
The Rove popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

Every Nut down in Nutroots, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any frog-march at all!
He HADN'T stopped Fitzmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Rove, with his rove-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without Cheney! It came without Bush!
"It came without Condi, or Rumsfeld or Rush!"

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