Lewis Libby was sentenced this morning to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine.
For the Libby apologists out there, consider this statement from the judge:
"Evidence in this case overwhelmingly indicated Mr. Libby's culpability," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said moments before he handed out the sentence. The judge said he was sentencing Libby "with a sense of sadness. I have the highest respect for people who take positions in our government and appreciate tremendously efforts they bring to bear to protect this country."
At the same time, Walton said, "I also think it is important we expect and demand a lot from people who put themselves in those positions. Mr. Libby failed to meet the bar. For whatever reason, he got off course."
The prison term was at the bottom end of the range suggested by prosecutors: 30 to 37 months. Defense attorneys sought probation.
Now the pardon watch begins. Bush himself may have nothing to lose from issuing a pardon: he'd probably lose whatever political capital he had left, but he doesn't have much of that anyway. But I suspect Congressional Republicans with 2008 political aspirations would line up to murder him.
If he waits until the end of his term to grant the pardon, Libby will have already served about half of his sentence. So maybe Bush will do that and claim that Libby has paid sufficiently for his crime. But that means letting Libby sit in jail for 15 months.
Libby, politics, midtopia
3 comments:
Bush should pardon him. I see no "overwhelming culpability" of anything here. There will be much criticism of this sentence coming from a lot of very smart people. Considering no one even got charged with an underlying crime here----much less found guilty of one----it's a quite ridiculous sentence.
JP5
Well, he did get convicted. Doesn't that mean anything? What you seem to be saying is that Bush should simply ignore the verdict of the jury because you don't like it. I guess that's the Republican version of respecting the rule of law. The jury seemed to think he was guilty; of course, since they were probably all Democrats, it doesn't count.
Marc says...."What you seem to be saying is that Bush should simply ignore the verdict of the jury because you don't like it. I guess that's the Republican version of respecting the rule of law."
Did you say the same when Bill Clinton pardoned former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski--who had been CONVICTED on criminal charges? Guess he didn't think Dan had done much wrong and the jury made a mistake. Or maybe that was just the Democrat's version of respecting the rule of law?
Well----in the Libby case, I KNOW Libby didn't do anything wrong and it's pretty obvious the jury was biased. They weren't even his peers----as the case should have been tried where he lives....in Virginia; not Washington D.C. Had they been unbiased, they would have realized that not only was there no original crime here proven; there was never even an orginal crime charged!! And they would have given him the benefit of the doubt on his mix-up of the sequence of events----just as they did Tim Russert and the other reporters who did the same.
Libby is a perfect candidate for a Presidential Pardon.
JP5
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