Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Libby Sentenced to 2 1/2 Years

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison yesterday after being found guilty of lying to the grand jury and obstructing justice in the CIA leak case that produced no one guilty of leaking anything.

While it seems a bit harsh that Libby should spend 2 1/2 years in prison, lying under oath is still one of the most punishable offenses in the judicial system. Just ask Bill Clinton, who was disbarred for it.

Of course, that's not what the story I linked to says. It says Libby is the highest ranking government official to be convicted since the Iran-Contra affair, another idiotic probe. Funny how they skip over Clinton's disbarrment, eh?

William Kristol at The Weekly Standard bitterly denounces the Bush administration's announcement that it will not comment on the case until the appeals process is over. That could take longer than President Bush has left in office, and Judge Reggie Walton seems to be unwilling to leave Libby out of prison while he appeals that conviction. Is this another case where President Bush is going to ignore the base?

Jeff Goldstein explains why the media treat Libby so badly but ignored Sandy "Socks" Berger.

For months and months now we’ve been hearing that the Libby trial was about the dangers of the “powerful” covering up their secrets—that Plame’s “outing” could actually jeopardize national security, and other self-righteous, hyperbolic, and patently absurd justifications for pushing forward in the hope of grabbing a Republican scalp.

Meanwhile, right here in front of us, we have a case where Sandy Berger, a former National Security Advisor, has voluntarily surrendered his law license rather than come clean about what documents he destroyed, why he destroyed them, and who he was trying to protect in doing so.

When I begin to hear the same people who’ve been braying for Libby’s blood take similar aim at Berger—and by all rights, their animus should be even more concentrated, given Berger’s position and power, and given the nature of his crime, which involved the pilfering and destruction of classified documents—I’ll take their defenses of the Libby show trial more seriously.

It will be a long wait. They are too busy still trying to claim that Plame was covert.