Sunday, June 17, 2007
To Be or Not To Be...
Hello...are you paying attention wingnuts; please listen up.
Unlike President Bush's latest maneuver of sneaking in a last minute interim U.S. attorney last week before signing a bill that overwhelmingly passed Congress outlawing such shenanigans in the future, the president's hands are kinna tied in a knot of his own making when in comes to St. Scoooter. Bush did what he did last week 'cause he could; and now he doesn't pardon 'cause he can't.
You see, to pardon Libby might not only invite Congress to investigate, but lead to unintended disastrous legal consequences for the White House.
Here's John Dean, former White House counsel under President Nixon, explaining:
In other words, Libby has to go the slammer, equal to Susan McDougal who refused to rat out to the feds and spare herself the indignity of prison during the Clinton Whitewater scandal: for the joy and hope of a pardon and the eternal gratitute of an administration.It should be of concern to Vice President Cheney that the Fitzgerald filing on Libby's sentence once again indicates that Special Prosecutor has concluded, based on the evidence, that Cheney was involved in Libby's misdeeds. Fitzgerald all but states that he still has not gotten to the bottom of this investigation because Libby refuses to tell the truth, and that, if he did reach that bottom, he would likely find Dick Cheney, who may well have violated a number of laws.
[...]I suspect Patrick Fitzgerald will be watching with great interest any pardon action. After all, he was working in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York when that office ignored the refusal of the Bush Department of Justice, under Attorney General Ashcroft, to investigate former President Bill Clinton's pardon of financier Marc Rich.
One would be wise to remember that Fitzgerald will still have five years before the statute of limitations runs to find out why such a pardon was issued, as occurred with Clinton's Marc Rich bottom. Fitzgerald's appointment as Special Counsel ends when he ends it, and given his apparent view that Cheney is at the heart of the Plame scandal, I don't expect him to end it prematurely.
