He has people for that.
Yeah, and everybody knows (since yesterday anyway), similar to perjury convictions, this death penalty sentence was way too harsh for killing only 15 people – so, if the crime doesn’t compute, you must commute.
My first thought was the bloggers were on to something, but now I’m not so sure. Can one still plead the Fifth for something for which one has already been convicted? And strictly speaking, he still could take the Fifth for anything not specifically covered by his perjury conviction, commutation or not. (Course, figuring out what parts of the Plame leak were not covered by his conviction would be a can o’ worms.)
Anyway, on to the snark I came here for:
Impeach the bastard. And take away his puppydog, too!
Yea. And while we’re at it - ‘attempted’ murder? What sort of lame-ass charge is that?
Q: If the POTUS has the right to Commute or Pardon, does not the POTUS also have the right to recind a prior Commuted sentance or a Pardon?
The idea being that a future president might rescind this and sentance Scooter to hard time until he roles on the higher-up criminals.
Of course this all becomes moot as soon as he takes that Mid-East job as CEO of Haliburton and that company/country refuses to extradict him. Or is that Cheney’s exit strategy?
No, he is supposed to be named CEO of this firm.
What scares me though, is with this continuous disregard of accountability by TPTB, the chance increases that someone might decide to take justice in their own hands and kill the next accused Pubbies.
The bloggers’ argument doesn’t work. If the investigators think he has anything to say, they could grant him immunity; and then there’s no risk of self-incrimination, same as if he’d been pardoned.
Now, supposing that happens, does anybody think he’d tell the truth?
No, the power to pardon is absolute. If Libby committed crimes other than this particular perjury he could be prosecuted for those other crimes, but this particular perjury charge cannot be reinstated. And anyway, Libby was facing 30 months in jail, which is two and a half years. As for the idea that he would roll over for the higher-up criminals, how would that work? The only higher up criminal possible is Cheney. What exactly could Libby testify to that would put Cheney in jail? Libby wasn’t sent to jail because he leaked Plame’s identity, he was sent to jail for perjury. OK, so Libby testifies that Cheney ordered him to do it, in return for the perjury charges being dropped. Now what does Cheney get charged with?
Actually, if Cheney ordered them to do it, one could argue that there is no crime at all since Cheney aparently had been given the authority to declassify information.
But if he wasn’t given that authority, then he’d be charged with conspiracy. A charge, btw, which is generally easier to get a conviction for than the actual crime itself.
I thought there was a specific law against revealing covert operatives’ names, so that information could never be declassified. Am I wrong?
TG, IANAL, but seems to me that if revealing a covert agent’s name is a crime, the classificaton of the secret is not relevent. There are definitions as to what and/or whom constitutes a “covert agent” and, IIRC, it doesn’t directly depend on a classification like “covert” or “deep deep cover” or “licensed to kill”.
This might be useful:
Could be. But it’s also my understanding that that statute is almost impossible to prosecute. So, if that’s the crime, then there’d by only an infinitesimal chance of Cheney being convicted. For one, you have to know that the agent was covert. Very tough to prove.
Sure, but Wikipedia pointed out that he was not guilty of the murder for which he received the death penalty. It would have been wrong not to pardon him.
What part of “president’s power to pardon” don’t you understand? Helping out your fall guy was not, in this case, in any way illegal, and it was the decent thing to do. Yeah, I would have loved to see Libby go to jail – don’t get me wrong on that. I’m truly disappointed that he gets off with a slap on the wrist. But if we’re going to go after the Bush administration over this one, it should be for the actual crime that Libby helped cover up, not for Bush commuting Libby’s sentence.
Decent in a ‘pee on the rule of law’ and ‘take a crap on our covert services’ kind of a way. Yeah
straight man, that’s twice now, you’ve asserted that it was the decent thing to do. How do you reconcile that assertion with the fact that it was a thing that Shrubya did?
I hear what you are saying but it overlooks the fact that perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes all by themselves. No so-called “underlying crime” is needed.
The justice system relies on people telling the truth in legal proceedings. Without that you might as well not bother with a grand jury investigation or any trial.
I’m not saying he doesn’t have the authority to do it, I’m saying it’s wrong. I’m not sure what convinced you that giving preferential treatment is somehow synonymous with “the decent thing to do.” I’m sure there have been plenty of people convicted of perjury over the past six years who would have loved to have had their sentences commuted.
Well… Nah, too easy.
Because Bush and Cheney told Scooter to throw himself in front of the bus with the promise that he’d never go to jail and his family’s financial future was secured till the day his last grandchild died of old age? Therefore, it would have been quite crass for Dubya to NOT let him off the hook, eh?
-Joe