Compassionate Conservatism?

A systemic assault on American rule of law by the Bush administration

Apparently I'm quite slow on the uptake since it's taken me seven years to fully understand what the Right Wing means when they call Bush a "compassionate conservative". But now I get it. The man may have happily consigned 155 prisoners to death when he was governor of Texas, including a refusal to commute the sentence of a 33-year-old mentally retarded black man with an IQ of around 60 and the functional skills of a 7-year-old boy. He may have sent more than 3600 US soldiers (and counting) to their death in Iraq without ever making clear why he sent them in the first place, especially since four years ago he baited the Iraqi insurgents to attack our soldiers by taunting them with "Bring 'em on!" -- possibly the most irresponsible statement any president has ever uttered. He may have widened the income gap, deepened the budget deficit, slashed funding for social programs, eroded American freedoms in the name of security, and whipped up a global storm of anti-American hatred. But he clearly couldn't stomach the idea of Scooter Libby spending even a single day behind bars. So Bush did something about it and commuted his sentence before it even began. Now that's what I call compassion...

Bush believed Scooter Libby's sentence was "excessive." In other words, two-and-a-half years in jail for perjury is just way over the line in a case which involved the undermining of our national security; exposing a CIA agent's cover; and potentially damaging this agent's covert operation to track unaccounted-for nuclear material (loose nukes) -- all orchestrated by the vice president to get even with Ambassador Joe Wilson. The truth is that commuting Libby's prison term had nothing to do with any sudden outbreak of sympathy or humanity. The president's decision had everything to do with a likely deal between the vice president and Libby's attorneys in which Libby promised to keep the focus away from Cheney in exchange for the VP promising to see what he could do about the sentence. That's it.

So the president all but pardoned Libby by commuting his prison sentence. The outrage isn't the pardon, it's that this is the final piece of evidence that Bush has written off the American people. Despite overwhelming polls that showed the American people did not want the president to free Scooter Libby, he commuted his sentence. The President is operating like a dictator. He said recently that history will judge him -- that he won't be judged until after he's dead. In effect he's saying he's accepted that this generation of Americans have rejected him. And he's telling the American people he won't listen -- we can't judge him because he won't let us.

In conclusion, for Bush to say "I respect the jury's verdict, but I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison." is pure hypocrisy. First of all, Bush "wrote" (laugh!) in his autobiography, A Charge To Keep, "I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own." (Let that sink in for a second…) Furthermore, Bush is currently calling upon Congress to make every federal crime subject to a mandatory minimum sentence in his proposed Sentencing Reform Act, (Word for Word from that act: "...Restore the binding nature of the guidelines by making the bottom of the guideline range for each offense a minimum sentence that must be imposed when the elements of the offense are proven...") thereby preventing judges from imposing an individually tailored sentence based on their view of the offender's character and mitigating factors. Yet Bush has no qualms making an exception for a single member of his Administration.

I am also not the only one who thinks this way...

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

"It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals."

 

Melanie Sloan, legal counsel to Joe and Valerie Wilson:

“First, President Bush said any person who leaked would no longer work in his administration. Nonetheless, Scooter Libby didn’t leave office until he was indicted and Karl Rove works in the White House even today. More recently, the vice president ignored an executive order protecting classified information, claiming he isn’t really part of the executive branch. Clearly, this is anadministration that believes leaking classified information for political ends is justified and that the law is what applies to other people.”

 

Sen. Barack Obama:

“This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years.”

 

Sen. Charles Schumer:

“As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under the law. This commutation completely tramples on that principle.”

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

“The President’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter ofnational security. The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President’s Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

“The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people. The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.”

 

Sen. Joe Biden:

“Last week Vice President Cheney asserted that he was beyond the reach of the law. Today, President Bush demonstrated the lengths he would go to, ensuring that even aides to Dick Cheney are beyond the judgment of the law. It is time for the American people to be heard. I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law.”

 

John Edwards:

“Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush’s America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.”

 

Gov. Bill Richardson:

“It’s a sad day when the President commutes the sentence of a public official who deliberately and blatantly betrayed the public trust and obstructed an important federal investigation. This administration clearly believes its officials are above the law, from ignoring FISA laws when eavesdropping on US citizens, to the abuse of classified material, to ignoring the Geneva Conventions and international law with secret prisons and torturing prisoners. There is a reason we have laws and why we expect our Presidents to obey them. Institutions have a collective wisdom greater than that of any one individual. The arrogance of this administration’s disdain for the law and its belief it operates with impunity are breathtaking. Will the President also commute the sentences of others who obstructed justice and lied to grand juries, or only those who act to protect President Bush and Vice President Cheney?”

 

Sen. Dick Durbin:

"When it comes to the law, there should not be two sets of rules -- one for President Bush and Vice President Cheney and another for the rest of America. Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail. No one in this administration should be above the law."

 

Sen. Chris Dodd:

"By commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, the president continues to abdicate responsibility for the actions of his administration. The only ones paying the price for this administration's actions are the American people."

 

Rep. Tom Lantos:

"This decision sends the wrong message about the rule of law in the United States, just as the president is meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. How can we hold the line against injustices in other countries when our own executive branch deliberately sets out to smear its critics, lies about it and then wriggles away without having to pay the price in prison?"