Bush makes punishment fit the crime
Failing so far to accomplish anything positive, Congressional Democrats continue to engage in their favorite pastime – bashing President Bush.
The decision by the President to commute the 30-month prison sentence handed down to Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby was bound to draw protests from Democrats. In typical hyperbolic fashion, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed: “Libby’s conviction was one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War.”
Reid conveniently forgets, however, that the Bush Administration has been held accountable for its conduct of the Iraq War – by voters in last November’s elections. It has also become clear that the Libby case has nothing to do with Iraq, intelligence, or even the White House’s manipulative ways, but rather amounted to a political payback by an overzealous prosecutor who otherwise came up empty handed after an expensive and prolonged investigation into trumped up affair.
The supposed crime that launched an investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had to do with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, who at the time was not working under cover but rather had been assigned to a desk job. Libby was not convicted of outing Plame, rather he was convicted of lying under oath. There remains some question as to whether or not he lied, or simply was inconsistent in his answers to repeated questioning by prosecutors.
Let’s go with the jury’s decision that Libby lied under oath. The next question is, as House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) put it: did the punishment fit the crime? Libby was fined $250,000, given a 30-month prison sentence and two years of probation. Blunt, along with many other conservatives, feel that even if Libby is guilty of perjury, a 30-month prison sentence is too harsh.
President Bush agreed. With a federal judge ready to send Libby to prison immediately, the President’s hand was forced. But Bush did not act precipitously. It is important to note that he did not grant a pardon, which would have wiped Libby’s conviction off the records. Rather he surgically commuted the prison sentence leaving intact the conviction, the fine, and the probation.
Bush’s action stands in stark contrast to the manner in which his predecessor, former President Bill Clinton handled such matters. Reid and his fellow Democrats were strangely silent when, on his last day in office, President Clinton issued full and complete pardons to the likes of billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich who fled to Switzerland to evade prosecution on 51 counts of tax evasion and fraud; and Carlos Vignali who walked free on his conviction for conspiracy to sell cocaine. Vignali’s father, Horacio, is a large donor to the Democratic Party. President Clinton even used his pardon power to benefit his own family, pardoning his half-brother Roger for a 1985 cocaine-related offense.
No Reid and company had nothing to say about the Clinton Administration’s use and abuse of Presidential pardon power, but today are acting as if all known civilization might cease to exist because Scooter Libby is not going to prison.
Democrat hypocrisy aside, President Bush made the right decision in the Libby case. Libby was not responsible for outing Valerie Plame, and should not pay the price for a crime he did not commit. He stands convicted of lying under oath, and the President has let that conviction – along with just punishment for that infraction – to stand.
The punishment now fits the crime. It is time now for Democrats to stop beating a political dead horse and to begin to focus on dealing with the many truly significant issues that confront our nation.