Tuesday’s Mini-Report

July 3, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Dan Froomkin: “Bush’s decision yesterday to commute Libby’s prison sentence isn’t just a matter of unequal justice. It is also a potentially self-serving and corrupt act. Was there a quid pro quo at work? Was Libby being repaid for falling on his sword and protecting his bosses from further scrutiny? Alternately, was he being repaid for his defense team’s abrupt decision in mid-trial not to drag Cheney into court, where he would have faced cross-examination by Fitzgerald?”

* Rudy Giuliani used to believe one year behind bars for perjury was too lenient. In Libby’s case, Giuliani believe no time behind bars is entirely appropriate. I wonder what the difference is?

* Defense Secretary Bob Gates has an idea he’s willing to pitch to the Hill: he’ll shut down the surge policy, if Dems will commit to a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq. It seems like a non-starter.

* Gates also has a few ideas he’s willing to pitch when it comes to shutting down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

* Joe Lieberman seriously believes Iran has already “declared war” on the United States, and wants the nation to respond in kind. The poor man isn’t well.

* Slate’s Tim Noah, whose work I usually enjoy, has a very odd and misguided take on the Libby commutation. Thankfully, Digby takes him to task.

* Newspaper editorial boards across the country were unimpressed with the president’s decision on Libby. E&P has a round-up, but I particularly liked the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s take: “President Bush’s commutation of a pal’s prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system. It’s the latest sign of the huge repairs to American concepts of the rule of law that await the next president.”

* Food for thought: “Paris Hilton did more time than Scooter Libby.”

* Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) is making a run for the Dumbest Republican Presidential Candidate Award: “Yesterday on MSNBC’s Hardball, [Hunter] said that Elizabeth Edwards’s calls to stop making ‘personal attacks’ against her family were attempts to ‘silence conservative voices.’ He added that Coulter ‘is a very articulate spokeswoman for the conservative view’ and ‘closely approaching that level of being a great American.'”

* Rumor has it that Keith Olbermann will devote a “special comment” to the Libby commutation tonight on MSNBC. Something to look forward to.

* Would you believe Sean Hannity is still praising The Path to 9/11 miniseries? Even now, the Fox News personality believes the discredited fiction “got it right.”

* AP: “Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is in the midst of divorce proceedings with his wife, acknowledged in a statement published Tuesday that he is in a relationship with a Spanish-language television reporter.” Villaraigosa’s a Dem, but if he were a Republican, he’d still be well positioned to run for president.

* And finally, Jim Capozzola, proprietor of The Rittenhouse Review and political blogosphere pioneer, died yesterday. My condolences to his friends and family.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

the ever-alert atrios points out that comparisons of the libby commutation and the marc rich pardon are especially ironic because… wait for it… marc rich’s lawyer was i. lewis libby!

  • CB, Keith Olbermann announced at the end of last night’s show that he would be giving a special comment tonight to call for Bush and Cheney to leave office. Sounds like a can’t-miss-it one to me! I just wonder if he’s going to call for resignations, impeachments or generalized pitchforking…

  • Why the coyness? Let’s advertise it widely.
    Here’s what Olbermann has promised:

    reminder that tomorrow night here my special comment in the wake of the Libby commutation, urging for the sake of our nation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush resign their offices.

  • Olbermann could do worse than repeat what Oliver Cromwell said when he dismissed Parliament, and what Leo Amery repeated when he urged Neville Chamberlain to resign (sorry for a repeat, but it’s apt and I like it.):

    “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

  • Joe Lieberman seriously believes Iran has already “declared war” on the United States, and wants the nation to respond in kind.

    Fine, grab that toxic little weasel and drop him on Tehran. Once the Bush-infused liquids of his useless carcasse splatter on the Iranians it will be just a matter of days before they’re grabbing their ankles for the pResident.

  • Duncan Hunter was also on CNN this morning, claiming that Libby was not convicted of “lying,” only of making “inconsistent statements.” Complete nonsense, of course, but that doesn’t seem to matter any more. Even apart from the obstruction of justice count, which has been argued to be the more signficant, a conviction of perjury requires “the deliberate, willful giving of false, misleading, or incomplete testimony under oath.” Once you put “deliberate” and “wilful” in there, it requires that the jury eliminate accidental misremembering as an explanation, which they did.

  • Watching David Shuster (sp?) the last couple of days, and on Tucker’s show just now, I see that he is smart, quick on his feet, and well informed. Too bad that his career is about to end. Same with the woman who substituted for Keith (Allison something? Sorry I don’t remember her name. She was good too.) If the cable networks gave us more like them, who knows, maybe they’d make some money.

  • You should all be easier on the President re: commuting I. Scooter Libby’s sentence- it’s hard work, like Rocky training to fight Ivan Drago or Clubber Lang.

  • If you liked the Seattle PI’s editorial, you should have seen the front page (mysteriously not on the website, as far as I can tell). It had a huge headline: “Scooter Skates,” with a couple of well-chosen Bush quotes about the importance of respecting the legal system highlighted below. It was a fine example of true journalism, which is usually all too lacking from the contemporary MSM.

  • You’d think you’d all be doing more to make fun of the President on this thread. I’m doing double duty here- that comment at #8 was worth two ordinary quips.

  • Would you believe Sean Hannity is still praising The Path to 9/11 miniseries? Even now, the Fox News personality believes the discredited fiction “got it right.”

    Not surprising that Sean “The Hitman” Hannity is disinterested in 9/11 Truth. Especially when you consider that The Hitman considers anyone who so much as questions the best cover-up that $15 million can buy, the 9/11 Commission, a heretic. Sorry, Sean, they left any investigation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7 completely out of the 9/11 Commission Report, it’s a fact. Riddle me why, Sean. Collapse of a 47-story skyscraper not relevant to an investigation of 9/11?

    However, the Patriotic “Jersey Girls” (9/11 widows) were interested in Truth when they advocated for the creation of the 9/11 Commission. Their brave story is documented in this excellent film: 9/11: Press for Truth

  • Trying to find a ray of light in this abortion of justice, Scooter was convicted of perjury. I wonder if Scooter could one day, like say when a new administration is in town, stand trial yet again for violating this nation’s security by outing a national security asset. I would be nice to see him on trial again in 18 months when his “get out jail free” card is revoked. I don’t believe that would be double jeopardy.

    And while I do not condone renegade actions by our own CIA, I would be highly intrigued if a member of our intelligence community would drop off some files of dirt about Scooter and his cohorts to a credible reporter like Sy Hersch to show that the CIA doesn’t approve of politicians f*cking with the secret covers of its operatives.

  • Here’s a link to that Seatlle newspaper front page.

    The Newseum website gives front pages for newspapers across the country and around the world. Makes for interesting reading. Most US newpapers have something about Libby on the front page – not Murdoch’s NYPost though – big-ass picture of a Moslim and outrage about the British “attacks” over the weekend (what”s today – Wednesday?). No wonder Fox news watchers tend to score lowest on current events awareness tests.

  • And while I do not condone renegade actions by our own CIA, I would be highly intrigued if a member of our intelligence community would drop off some files of dirt about Scooter and his cohorts to a credible reporter like Sy Hersch to show that the CIA doesn’t approve of politicians f*cking with the secret covers of its operatives.

    How do we know the CIA wasn’t cool with it? How do we know they didn’t consider blowing Plame’s cover a good way to get at Wilson, an acceptable sacrifice to advance Bush’s agenda in the context of whatever she was doing operationally? For all we know, Plame was even complicit in it, and for all we know, Plame isn’t even really a liberal (if that’s what she holds herself out as). Whatever really went on in this case, there’s a lot more to it- a bunch of cloak-and-dagger stuff- than just Bush, whose dad was a CIA agent, taking revenge on Wilson by outing his wife through his minions. Bush and Cheney have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with the CIA, they’re not going to just say ‘Fuck you’ to the CIA lightly. I think that was something in this case that was totally missed, but it’s natural for people not to want to speculate about the doings of the CIA at length in these times, since they’re involved in national security.

  • Also, if Cheney and Bush (a couple of assholes) want to use the CIA (also possibly a bunch of assholes) to do things the CIA is not supposed to do and that would really revolt people, then this serves the purpose of making it look like Bush and the CIA are at odds, so that people won’t be too alarmed at the risks of an autocrat that historically come with an executive who assumes a lot of power. This is a little too far-flung and Machiavellian to me- it seems like the details of this thing (that is, that the White House at the highest level of command) was behind it is something that was really sought to be kept in the dark. But it’s just a possibility. To me it’s more likely just that Bush (or Rove) wanted to show a bunch of people that the White House could still pull of a bunch of dity tricks on you if you were going to try to to criticize them in their war decisions- they tried to nip the problem in the bud- but attacking people comes with the risks of attacking people. How to attack people (and thereby terrorize their peers against opposing you) but not risk drawing harm to yourself? Create a fake attack on one of them. The CIA says, ‘You could out one of our guys that’s married to a critic of yours, it’s perfect.’ And either more or less people are actually in on it. If less people are in on it, maybe they don’t really care so much because they figure she’s a woman and therefore not a ‘real’ CIA agent, and plus she’s married to a liberal. If more people are in on it, then maybe Plame herself doesn’t even care about what happened.

  • Re: slip kid no more @ #17
    You led with Froomkin’s column, but you should have called it a MUST READ.

    To borrow from an earlier post directed at me, calm down.

    There’s no reason to get worked up about alleged “Obstruction of Justice” by the Bush Administration.

    In fact, until someone can explain to us where 67 votes for impeachment in the Senate will come from, what’s the point of posting any more bad stuff about the Bush Administration?

    Isn’t there a human interest story or two in Iraq that CB could write about? 🙂

  • it seems like the details of this thing (that is, that the White House at the highest level of command) was behind it is something that was really sought to be kept in the dark. But it’s just a possibility.

    A parenthesis was misplaced here. It should have been:

    “it seems like the details of this thing (that is, that the White House at the highest level of command was behind it) is something that was really sought to be kept in the dark.”

  • I needed some time to kill before “Entourage” this past Sunday, and since I had already seen everything else that I might be interested in, I figured I’d turn on “Hannity’s America” for a good laugh. I’m not entirely sure, because there’s a chance nobody is this dumb, but I’m fairly certain he called Sen. Clinton a socialist while discussing her thesis that talked about why big government wasn’t the answer and implied the famous You Tube ad that borrowed heavily from the Apple/IBM/1984 computer television spot was actually from the Clinton campaign, not something that an Obama supporter created. If I’m correct, I’m not sure I can look in his direction any longer.

  • Re: Olbermann, I think this is the comment you’re talking about. It’s worth reading. Some quick bites:

    “I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.” That — on this eve of the Fourth of July — is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

    The man who said those 17 words — improbably enough — was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon, in 1960.

    …

    We enveloped our president in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of nonpartisanship.

    And George W. Bush took our assent, and reconfigured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

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