I couldn't agree more Doc - I would like to think I would hold ANY politician to the same standards ( as low as the bar has now been set ) for this behavior- and so should we all. Just because someone has a ® or (D) behind thier name is NO reason to give them a "pass"for treason.

Let me put it this way- had some enlisted non-commisioned officers done all this- say- to discredit GW- don't ya think they would have done some jail time?

So, when the President states that the verdict should stand, he is not endorsing the verdict? That sounds a bit odd to me. That sounds a bit like he supports the verdict - or, at least, is saying he supports the verdict.

Considering his stance regarding other obstruction of justice cases and support for those sentencing requirements... for him to commute Libby's as excessive (while supporting the verdict) is odd as well, don't you think?

I guess the President isn't really interested in enforcing minimum sentences for those convicted of federal crimes. I mean, he does think the verdict should stand, after all, doesn't he?

So why would a President, who is interested in imposing standard minimum sentences for federal crimes, support a verdict - say that he thinks that it should stand, and then commute what could easily be considered a very light sentence for that crime. Now, whether or not Libby should have been on trial in the first place is irrelevant. He was convicted and the President says the verdict should stand. Why not impose the minimum sentence instead of commuting the sentence?

First, was the sentence in the Libby case "excessive"? Why or why not?

Well, no. Compared to much, much less serious crimes, like, oh anything that nets even 5 days of jail time- it is not even close to excessive- it was, if anything, too lenient.

Is covering up for an elected official, more or less serious than, oh, possesion of cocaine? _ I would say the covering up is far worse than simple possesion of a narcotic. Is it more or less serious than, oh, tax evasion? I would say more serious than tax evasion. And on and on.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean that comment to be as confrontational as it was. My apologies. My fault entirely.

Unfortunately, your post is just a huge sidestep of the dilemma at hand. Your refusal to acknowledge perjury (obstruction of justice) as a crime, or at least an independent crime, as demonstrated by:

seems to be the source of the misunderstanding. I seem to be unable to discern your position exactly, but I characterize it mostly from the following passages:


From what I gather, you believe Scooter Libby is basically someone who made a few honest, careless mistakes that left him vulnerable to a political witch hunt. When the special prosecutor Fitzgerald could not find an underlying crime, or a really big fish to go after, he decided to get what he could get, and punish Libby on a variety of technicalities.

Thus, through honest mistakes, Libby violated the letter, but not the spirit of the law. Is this a correct interpretation?

Here is a link to Tony Snow's 3July Press Conference where he gets into this in great detail. Wanted to get the link in early here.

I think that the President didn't want to second-guess the jury and their decision. The jury was simply a trier of fact in this case and they dealt with what was presented to them. Short of jury nullification, they really couldn't do anything else. Now, jury nullification is a pretty sensitive area when it comes to the justice system and I don't think any President would endorse it. That would, from the standpoint of our system of justice in this country be a very difficult thing to do for any elected official. I happen to think it's appropriate in certain cases, and it would have been in the Libby case. That's why I support a full pardon. But, I'm not the President and I do understand his actions in this case.



I think it's an attempt to mitigate a wrong as opposed to correcting it. Kind of like trying to take the middle ground. The problem one has though with being in the middle of the road is that you get hit from both sides.



Might want to go back to the link above and see what Tony Snow had to say about it. The President believes in justice and a big part of that is the jury system. They were the ones presented with the facts of this case and were the only ones who had to determine guilt or innocence based on those facts. Based on what they heard, they convicted. My argument here has been that there never should have been a trial in the first place. The entire investigation was fraudulent from day one.




It is not irrelevant whether the trial should have happened in the first place. That is the central issue to this entire Libby debate. I think the President should have issued a pardon, but I suppose for political reasons, he couldn't. That disappoints me, but I do understand politics and how things happen. The President "compromised" which is what everyone around here is always ranting about wanting him to do and his commutation of the sentence is something of a de facto recognition that Libby never should have been put on trial. I'm not thrilled with it, but I understand it and can live with it..... for now.

Edited to add a response to BH.......



That's a pretty good summation of the situation the way I see it, BH. I wouldn't label the charges against Libby as "technicalities" though, those are some pretty serious charges. I do however think that Fitzgerald set Libby up in the hopes of "flipping" him and when Libby didn't "flip" out of loyality or simply lack of knowledge of any crimes on the part of Cheney, Rove, et al. Fitzgerald came down on him. That's not justice, that's vindictivness.


Aquilla

When someone is questioned under oath in reference to an investigation and the answers given are false or misleading, then it doesn't matter whether or not that person has committed the crime under investigation. It is the fact that the person gave false or misleading testimony which is perjury. Or do you disagree?


Let's say you're right. Let's say that the whole investigation was fraudulent, that it was a witch hunt. How does that detract from the fact that a trial by jury found him guilty of perjury and obstructing justice? I just don't understand how the investigation matters.

Still, I don't buy that it was a political witch hunt. Or rather, I'm willing to buy this argument if and only if it can be proved that it is the case. Right now, all you're giving me is circular reasoning.

A: It was a political witch hunt
Q: Why?
A: Libby committed no crime.
Q: Wasn't Libby found guilty of perjury?
A: Yes, but there was no underlying crime.
Q: How do we know there was no underlying crime?
A: Because all Fitzgerald could charge Libby with was perjury and not the leak.
Q: Isn't perjury a serious offense?
A: Yes, but not if there's no underlying crime.
Q: How do we know there was no underlying crime?
A: There was no underlying crime because it was political witch hunt.


I'm not sure I'd put Libby in the best and brightest category but your point is well taken. What I keep returning to is: Libby was found to have obstructed justice and committed perjury by a jury who weighed the evidence given them and found for the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt. There is just no way to avoid this. He can certainly appeal the ruling; he can try to clear his name: he can try to demonstrate that it wasn't a fair trial.

What you are advocating here, Aquilla, is giving special preferences to people who "serve their country". When a person commits a crime, they should be held accountable. They should not be given special privileges based on their status within the government.

It's important to start out this post by saying that we won't know if there is an underlying crime or not. We don't know because Scooter Libby committed perjury.

Afterall, if you need a statement to prove a crime, and a statement is never given, you cannot say that there was no crime. The crime remains unproven either way because we still don't have the correct statement.

Hamnpering the investigation by not giving a truthful statement is a crime punishable by law.


We have all the evidence in, how exactly did the Judge and jury get it wrong? What, Aquilla, was the source of the unfairness?

It amazes me how many hoops you have to jump through in order to make this a trumped up case. It has to be a political witch hunt. The jury must be powerless to distinguish the difference between an honest mistake and a real crime. The special prosecutor, who has an extremely distinguished record (prosecuting the mafia takes guts), must have a "vindictive" goal. The judge, previously favored by Bush, has to be biased in order to give a 30 month sentence (while simultaneously being unable to distinguish between an honest mistake and a real crime). The Parole board must also be biased for adovacting a 16 month sentence. And lastly, Scooter Libby had to have made honest comments that must have fallen on precisecly the wrong side of the law in order to qualify as perjury, but just enough to confuse absolutely everyone in the courtroom, the 12 jury members and judge, that a "real" crime had been commited.

Its fantastical. Its beyond belief. It is a textbook violation ofOccums Razor. Libby would have to had been victim of either fantastic bad luck, or literally everyone, judge, jury and prosecutor, had to be out to "get" Libby.

So, I must hear it. How was this trial unfair?

Unfortunately you can only think that's what Libby did. You don't know. You probably won't ever know. It's likely you shouldn't ever know. (However, I totally should get the true answer )

So with that in mind. With the facts as we know them. Was 30 months excessive for perjury. Personally I think it was too light. However, I think it was too light for the right reasons.

Well not really. Let's for a moment pretend that Armitage is THE leaker. Let's also pretend that Armitage did NOT know that Plame was covert. There is no crime. In order for there to be a crime Armitage MUST know that Plame is covert. So perjury or no, there is no crime.
First Libby committed perjury, he should be in jail. Second, the Judge sentenced too lightly given the charges. However, as far a the trial being unfair, it wasn't. What was unfair was Fitzgerald continuing the investigation after he positively IDed the leaker which was his job. Fitzgerald continued to look for leakers when he had the leaker. Some have suggested that Armitage was A leaker not THE leaker. Poppy-cock! Fitzgerald had a simple job. Find the leaker. Not keep looking until you find one with a higher pecking order. Not run amok looking for a Merry Fitzmas. Find the leaker. In under 48 hours Fitzgerald found the leaker.

Now you're right far too many hoops need to be leaped in order for Libby to be innocent and set up. However, to try and tun this up the pole until you hit Cheney is, frankly, the realm of MiHOP, LiHOP Conspiracy Theory.

Got any proof? I mean anything? A letter, some DNA from chewed gum, a contrail? Anything?

He didn't want to second guess the jury and their decision, just the result of their decision? Again, this is a President trying to get Congress to impose mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes. Tony Snow indicated that the President respected the jury's decision. If he respected the jury's decision, he respects the verdict. Which would mean, that if the President wants to impose mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes, he should respect the minimum for this crime. In claiming that Bush's commutation was in line with the Parole Board's recommendation... there was no guarantee that Libby would get all the downward adjustments to his sentence that were being requested.



You think. But the President's statements and Tony Snow's statements contradict what you think. Both sets of statements claim that the verdict should stand. So, the President mitigates a wrong at the expense of policy that he wants to have enacted? Do you believe Congress should believe that the Bush Administration stands behind this mandatory minimum policy they want enacted considering this commutation?



Well, if the President felt that there shouldn't have been a trial in the first place, it seems to me that he would have indicated that the jury's verdict was meaningless and given Libby a full pardon. But, he didn't. So, either we take the President at his word... or we don't. Either way, it doesn't look good for the President.

So, either the President does believe the verdict should stand and commuted his sentence despite the belief that federal crimes like this should involve a mandatory minimum sentence or the President doesn't believe the verdict should stand and he's lying to us for political reasons (at a minimum). Either way, smells fishy.



Sure it is. The trial happened. You can't wish it away. And the President supports the verdict... he, according to Tony Snow, respects the jury's decision... respects the decision to convict Libby of this crime. What he doesn't appear to respect is the guidelines that he would mandatorily impose on you or I. Or there is another reason for commuting the sentence.

Please tell me you are not serious. Are you familiar with the law? We are talking about disclosing the identity of a covert agent - not outing some celebrity. It doesn't matter that her photo appeared in Vanity Fair or the New York Post or the Weekly World News. What matters is that the identity of a covert agent was disclosed to the press - that this information was thereby disclosed to every intelligence agency in the world - VEVAK, the ISI, the KGB, Mossad, the NSB, Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah - you name it. What - you think it would be fine if someone in the Vice President's office or the Department of State published a list of names of every covert agent in the CIA on the front page of Washington Times? You wouldn't think that was a serious breach of the law? Or would you? What if it was only two hundred names? Fifty? A dozen? When does the disclosure of covert agents' identities stop being a crime as far as you're concerned? Is it only when the agent is the wife of someone you dislike?

Your repeated references to Michael Collins verge on the idiotic. Even if Collins hadn't been a widely recognized figure in Dublin at the time (which he was), British Intelligence in 1916 did not have access to electronic surveillance or digital imaging or even the internet. If you're talking about after the Easter Rising, when the Cairo Gang was in operation, your claim is even more ludicrous. Collins had, by then, been elected a member of the Dáil (serving as MP from Cork), was a prominent member of the IRB, and was a member of the Aireachtas as Minister of Finance - he even became one of the delegates to the Anglo-Irish treaty negotiations in Knightsbridge. If nothing else, by the time the Cairo Gang started operating, Collins had already publicly appeared at the First Dáil in the Mansion House, Dublin. Faces didn't get much better known than his. What - did you see some romanticized movie about Collins once or something? Sheesh.

In any event, your equation of "outing" with publishing photos is as patently absurd as arguments ever get around here. Do you think there were no photos of Valerie Plame in existence before a few snaps were taken for an article in Vanity Fair? Do you think there is any intelligence agency in the world that, having her name, couldn't have found a picture to go with it? Her cover was that of an American ambassador's wife, for God's sake. American ambassador's wives don't tend to wear burkas or hide behind the drapery at social gatherings. Precisely how blinkered does one have to be to even conceive of such an argument?

But enough of the risible irrelevancies. What really matters here - what is of gravely consequential importance - is establishing the precedent of the Executive being able to disclose the identities of covert agents for purely political purposes with impunity. If that doesn't strike you as ill-advised, then - well... I understand how your arguments can be so utterly, utterly specious. Just how far are you willing to go to justify the unjustifiable? I expect we'll find out.


Oh, by the way, Kivrot, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame NEVER appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. Two photos appeared inside the magazine. In one, Plame is wearing large sunglasses and a hat; in the other, she's holding a newspaper in front of her face. Perhaps you should ask Vanity Fair for your own personal copy. I needn't - I'm a subscriber. Otherwise, you really should be more careful about whose talking points you cut 'n' paste without doing a bit of your own research. People who think for themselves often come off a bit better in these discussions. Just sayin'.


Ahem - it was the Bush administration's Department of Justice that instigated the investigation at the behest of the Bush administration's CIA and the Bush administration's Department of Justice that appointed the "partisan attack dog", Patrick Fitzgerald - three months after Armitage's admission. So the Bush administration designed a witch-hunt in order for the Bush administration appointee to "nail" someone (apart from Armitage) in the Bush administration? I don't know what the motivations of the Bush administration were, either, Aquilla. So, yeah, maybe the Bush administration should appoint a second special prosecutor to investigate the first special prosecutor that the Bush administration appointed. You think that would bear more fruit than the Bush administration's first effort? Maybe the Bush administration should keep appointing special prosecutors until they find someone outside the Bush administration to take the fall for a leak that emerged from within the Bush administration. I expect that's the only outcome that would resolve this to your satisfaction. How transparently partisan are we going to get here?


I don't believe that I've engaged in any name-calling - nor have my arguments been either partisan or politically-motivated. That would apply to at least three or four other contributors to this thread. For some reason, you don't seem to respond to our posts. There may be very little discussion about the legal merits of the case here, but that's not because the legal merits of the case have not been raised - merely because they have not been addressed by Bush's defenders - at least not with arguments that would fail to raise laughter in a middle school debate club.

You want to discuss the legal merits of the case, Aquilla? Discuss them. Was Valerie Plame's identity disclosed - or not? Was Scooter Libby found guilty of perjury, making false statements, and obstruction of justice - or not? Was Libby's sentence absolutely consistent with those of similar crimes in other cases - or not? If you don't want to discuss the legal merits of the case, why don't you pick out one or two posts in which people have indulged in extraneous belittling, ignore all other contributors, and debate irrelevancies. Oh, wait - that's what you are doing.


And why doesn't someone - anyone - on the right address the FACT that the investigation was initiated by the Bush administration AFTER Armitage confessed to leaking the information to Novak? Why, oh, why did George W Bush's Attorney General hire an "attack dog" to "go after" George W Bush's administration, knowing full well that Richard Armitage was already "the leaker"? If it wasn't because the Attorney General's office or the CIA knew there was more to the case than Richard Armitage, then why?

Anyone??

And to add to an otherwise excellent narrative, Eleanor Clift - apparently a reformed Bushbot - has realized the gravity of the crime. She thought more people should have been implicated due to the gravity of this offense. I'm just a little disappointed she didn't call the Libby supporters out for the hypocrites they actually are.

I'll go on the record and apologize for criticizing anyone's thinking abilities here. But here's what I can't understand: Before this invasion happened, many people like me made the arguments that held true - no production facilities = no WMD (because of the short shelf life), no links to Al Qaida, no state sponsored terrorism, nation building, etc. I call that a reasonable amount of foresight when taking an objective look at the situation when not clouded by the memory of 9/11. Many of us were correct (I got banned from lucianne.com for my viewpoints, thus finding AD), but the people who got it all wrong attempt to claim hindsight because that's really the best they got.

When I jumped off the Bush bandwagon because I discovered he was a liberal fraud long ago, only lately have some supporters come the realization many of us "cut-n-run republicans" (something Rush calls us) were right. Bush supporters still cling to the belief that it is plausible to be accidentally 100% wrong about every aspect of the Iraq war, yet when spouting the stakes of failure in Iraq, have no problem letting the guy that hasn't been correct once stay in charge of it while letting our troops die for it.

So, much like Eleanor Clift's article, it's simple common sense to see what happened. A crime was committed that had little to do with Armitage leaking to Novak. That's only the surface of the case. There is no justification - ever - to use a CIA employee as a political football regardless of status. Apologizing for this behavior is like supporting the school bully beating up the little girl in a wheel chair because her mommy is mean. If you are in the right, you could at least pick a fair fight.

Creating an adversarial situation with the CIA takes no skill. If that's the best someone can do, we need somebody better. But since Bush supporters trust the guy that has never been correct about anything in Iraq stay in charge, I have no doubt they have no problem with the guy who's skill set is limited to retribution, threats, and deceit remain in office with as much power as he has.

As an absolute I would disagree. In order to prove perjury, the lies or misstatements have to be deliberate and material. The legal definition of the term material is as follows.....



Given the fact that no crime for "outing" Plame has ever been charged against anyone, I find it difficult to see how Libby forgetting a conversation with Tim Russert, Judith Miller, or Matt Cooper is relevant to anything. If the accusation is that he "outed" Plame in those conversations and that it was a crime, why wasn't he charged with that?



It is possible to have a "fair trial" where all the trial rules and procedures are followed correctly. And, they probably were in Libby's trial and that's why he doesn't stand a very good chance of winning on appeal. The appeal has to cite a serious error in trial procedure that denied him due process. It is not a hearing based on evidence (fact finding). That is one reason why it is so difficult to win an appeal even when the original witnesses against you recant their testimony. Appeals judges do not like to perform the job of trial judges.

So, I'm not saying Libby didn't receive a fair trial, he probably did. What I am saying is there never should have been a trial in the first place.




I think you are mischaracterizing my argument. My argument runs more along the lines of entrapment. You can find the definition for that here. By the time the investigators questioned Libby, they already knew the source of the leak to Robert Novak. And, it was that leak that triggered the investigation. They already knew who did it, so why ask Libby about it? Did he tell Armitage to leak the information? Not likely seeing as how Armitage was never even called as a witness in the Libby trial. Let's set up a hypothetical here to see if I can explain my thinking a little bit better.......

I go to my bank to make an ATM withdrawl and as I leave the ATM, cash in hand I pass by a guy walking into the bank. It turns out this guy is on his way to rob the bank, and he does. I'm already on my way to the store when this happens, but I hear about the robbery on the radio and I hear the police have caught the guy that did it. Great! All said and done. Right?

Wrong, not quite yet. The police detective investigating the robbery reviews the security camera tapes and sees me leaving the ATM and walking right past the robber, and this detective recognizes me. He and I had a dispute a few years ago and I won a civil judgement against him in court. He doesn't like me very much, so he thinks maybe he can get a little "payback". So, he comes knocking on my door with a picture of the bank robber and asks me if I've ever seen this person before. Hell, I don't know, doesn't look familiar to me so I tell him, "No, I haven't". BINGO! He's got me. Lying to an investigator because he can prove that I did indeed see the robber, the one they've already caught, because of the bank video tape. Doesn't matter because the prosecutor doesn't like me very much either, I supported his opponent in the last election, so he files an obstruction of justice case against me. My defense? I was thinking more of what I needed to pick up at the store than who the person going into the bank was and I don't recall seeing him. Doesn't matter, I "lied". Hypothetical, yes. But, not too far off from what happened to Libby.




I don't know Libby at all, but he was a very successful lawyer in private practice. And success means he was raking in big time cash. He left that for service in the White House at a considerable pay-cut. See my above hypothetical for why I don't think there should have even been a trial, but let's talk a little about the appeals process and what it's really all about. Check out this website. Read through some of the cases they've litigated over the years. Even when they have iron-clad DNA evidence of a wrongful conviction, it's like pulling teeth to get an appeals court to consider it. I watched a documentary on Court TV about a case in Indiana where a lawyer took on the case of a man convicted of rape and murder. She had DNA evidence that not only proved this man was innocent of the crime, but also proved who was guilty - another person on death row for a similar crime. It took her YEARS to convince the appeals court to free him. Even the Indiana State Attorney General argued this man should be released, that the conviction was wrong. And it still took YEARS! That's because the trial at the time was conducted properly and they didn't have the benefit of DNA at the time. The appeals court looked at the trial process, not the evidence. They didn't want to be a "trier of fact". And even when this lawyer finally won the appeal, the court ordered a NEW trial. Thankfully, the State Attorney dropped the charges, but that's the process.




No, I'm not arguing that at all. What I am arguing is that if we don't stop making political targets out of people who are willing to put their lives on hold and serve our country, then we aren't going to get the best and brightest to serve. They won't do it and why should they? What we will end up with is a bunch of crooks. I don't want that to happen and that's why I'm defending Libby and why I have defended Sandy Berger in the past.

I'll get to the other posts here when I get a chance.....


Ok, edited to add a response to BH......




Of course we do. Long before Libby was questioned the Justice Department knew who leaked Valerie Wilson's name to Robert Novak. Ot was Richard Armitage. So, if that leak was indeed a crime, then why was Armitage not charged? Nothing Libby said or didn't say had anything to do with that. They already knew it was Armitage.



I haven't claimed the trial itself was "unfair". My claim, and I'm repeating myself, over and over and over is that there never should be BEEN a trial. Jurors are triers of fact and they are given strict instructions that they are to only consider evidence that is presented to them and apply it to the law as instructed by the judge. For example, if you are asked to serve on a jury in California in a DUI trial (and I have been), one of the first things the will ask you in the selection process is whether or not you agree with the "Implied consent" law which forces you to take a Breath-alyzer or BAC test on demand or lose your driver's license. Now, if you want off that jury, you tell them no and you'll be excused in a New York second. That's because judges don't like jury nullification, it really ticks them off. Had I been on the Libby jury and voted "Not guilty" (which I would have done), it would have been because I didn't think the trial should have happened in the first place and that is textbook jury nullification. So, I doubt I would have been selected for that jury unless I lied during the selection process and that could subject me to criminal prosecution.

Edited yet again to add my next "chapter" Like I said, it's a target rich enviornment in this thread... This time, entspeak........



The "result" of the jury decision was a guilty verdict, not a jail sentence. I don't know how it works where you come from, but in California juries (excerpt in death penalty cases) are specifically instructed not to consider anything regarding the punishment that might result from a guilty verdict. The sentence is set by the judge, not the jury. So, Bush's position is that he wasn't vacating the jury's decision at all.




I don't know anything about this proposed legislation at all. Might be a good topic for a new thread though.



I think he should have granted a full pardon, but I'm not him and I'm not operating in his political environment. It's pretty easy for me to sit here in Los Angeles and say, "Well, if I was in the White House this is what I would do". Had I been advising him, and I wasn't, I would have told him to go for the whole enchilada, but that's an LA thing.



Here we go again.... Yes, the trial happened and it shouldn't have happened. But, it did and given the way criminal trials in this country work juries are only allowed to consider the evidence presented to them and the application of the law presented to them. It is possible to say, "Given what was presented to the jury I can understand their verdict. But, there never should have been a trial in the first place". I can say that, but a public official really can't. Especially the President. If our elected leaders start endorsing jury nullification that opens Pandora's Box. I think Bush could have issued a pardon without opening that box, but I'm not advising him.


Ok, Wertz is next, but I have some other things to do at the moment. Not to worry, Wertz, I'll get to you.

Aquilla

Edited: I got the wrong quotation from Aquilla's post and had to change it.


Aw C'mon Aquilla. Judges give instructions to juries. I seriously doubt one of the options Judge Walton gave the jury was to vote not guilty, if they thought a trial should not have been held. Most likely you would have violated the judge’s instructions and created a hung jury.

Aquilla, you and other Republicans like to accuse Democrats of "whining." Republicans are squeeling, like pigs caught under a gate, with this "poor Libby" routine. As net2007 recently said, "pot call the kennel black."

Edited to add:

Judge Walton read 50 pages of instructions.



http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/22/cia.leak/index.html

And now BoF enters the queue.....

Kind of difficult to keep up here, but my computer is rendering a DVD with no problem, so I've got some time. I LOVE my MAC!

Anyway, on to Wertz.....





First of all, it wasn't the Ashcroft (AG at the time) who hired Fitzgerald. Ashcroft recused himself for a reason I don't really know. The guy that hired Fitzgerald was an old buddy of his who was Deputy Attorney General James Comey who had worked with him as an assistant US attorney in New York. Ironically they had prosecuted Marc Rich (of Clinton pardon fame) and one of the lawyers involved in Rich's defense was none other than Scooter Libby. "Payback"? I honestly don't know.


Edited to add....

Ok, DVD burned and the NASCAR race hasn't started yet and I've completed my "honey do" list for the day. So, on to DR.......





Eleanor Clift is a "reformed Bushbot"? You gotta be kidding! Eleanor Clift is one of the biggest Clinton apologists anywhere around. Sheesh! Moving on.....



Little to do with Artimage's leak you say? Then just what in the hell did it have to do with? If what Armitage did wasn't a crime, and apparently it wasn't, then what was the crime?





Oh pullleeeezzzze.... You have alrerady said that Armitage's leak wasn't a crime and we are talking about a criminal case here. So, where's the crime? I asked earlier in some post here "where's the beef?" and borrowing a page from Wertz's script I will point out that nobody has addressed that question. Why was Armitage's leak not a crime, yet Libby's alleged leak a crime? And, if you can answer that one, then tell me why Libby wasn't charged with that crime? Where's the BEEF? Where is the underlying crime that makes Libby's statements "material" to a case? There was no case.



Just more Bush-bashing crap. Pure Crap. Note to Wertz: I normally don't respond to crap. I have better things to do.

Now, on to BoF.......




Actually, the judge did give specific instructions on how the jury could find Libby not guilty when they raised the question of "reasonable doubt". Those instructions can be found here. However, had I caused a hung jury because I believed the trial should not have been held then I would have effectively ignored the judge's instructions. That is not illegal, but it's a dirty little secret that the justice system doesn't wish to be widely known. A juror doesn't need a reason for why they voted the way they did. They can just say, "I didn't think he was guilty", and they don't even have to say that. That's why the courts go though the voir dire process. Jurors are placed under oath and asked specific questions. Some of those questions are designed to ferret out a person that might have a basic disagreement with the case being tried. Judges don't like jury nullification, but there is absolutely nothing illegal about it. If I'm on a jury, my job is decide whether the person is guilty of the crime they are charged with or not. That's my job. The judge's job is to make legal rulings and run the trial. As a juror, I don't try to do the judge's job and the judge better not try to do mine. That's why they tend to week people like me out of juries through the selection process.




I doubt any of the jurors' "life experiences" mimic those of the Chief of Staff to the Vice President during a time of war. I would have amended that instruction to include a reminder to the jury of that in order to put things into context. I'll throw in a "personal experience" of mine to illustrate that, and then I'd done here for awhile........

I spent 10 years at Disney creating "mock-ups" of new rides for all of our theme parks. In that capacity I met all kinds of famous people when Disney would bring them into my building for a demonstration of a new ride. Sometimes, Michael (as in Eisner) would be with them and he'd always say hello to me and ask me about my family and how things were going. Now, to most people, at least in those days, having an informal chat with Michael Eisner would be a pretty big deal, especially out here in LA. And, in their "life experience" that is something they'd remember because it didn't happen very often. In my life in those days, it did and so I wouldn't necessarily remember a specific conversation I had with him or any of the other celebrities that I met.

Well, in Libby's life, he probably talked to reporters and TV people like Tim Russert all the time. To us normal people, that would be a big deal, but to him? Business as usual, happened all the time. So, I would have fought harder for an amended instruction on that one.





Aquilla

Aquilla: Do you seriously believe that Reggie Walton, a law 'n' order Bush appointee - or, for that matter, Libby's defense - forgot to define "perjury" for the jury? Do you actually think the jury was unaware of the fact that lies under oath have to be deliberate and that they have to be material? Or are you now suggesting that the vast conspiracy created by the Bush administration's Justice Department extends to the jurors themselves? Libby's "defense" grows more phantasmagoric daily. :wacko: As you're so keen on the "legal merits" of the case, Aquilla, maybe you should spend a bit of time looking up "obstruction of justice". You might find it more profitable than telling us what the jury would clearly have known about "perjury".


Right. Back here on planet earth, I doubt you could get much further off from what happened to Libby, as hypotheticals go. Maybe if you mentioned that the robber also lived in your building or worked in the next cubicle at your office or something and that you knew he was going to rob the bank, but forgot because those things you needed to pick up at the store were so urgent (despite the fact that nine friends testified that you didn't have to go to the store at all). At the moment, though, you're comparing apples and orbits.


I hate to be the one to break it to you, Aquilla, but we have ended up with a bunch of crooks. I find it difficult to imagine more corruption in this country than we've seen in the past several decades. We don't have the best and the brightest, we have the best-connected and the shadiest. Every administration since Eisenhower has been rife with corruption and (with the possible exception of the Carter administration) they have been getting progressively more crooked - with the two Bush administrations reaching the nadir of gangster politics. "Willing to put their lives on hold and serve our country"? Give me a break! "Willing to put their lives on hold and fleece the country" would be more like it. The current crowd of scoundrels makes the Ohio Gang look like milk-money extortionists. And the only way to address that fact is to start treating our "leaders" as the criminals that they are - and stop letting them get away with murder.


But we don't know that Armitage's leak "was indeed a crime". Several of us have been reiterating this till we're blue in the fingers: justice was obstructed and therefore thwarted. We also don't know that Libby's leak or Rove's leak or Cheney's leak was a crime. We can't know: justice was obstructed. Libby may be covering up for Armitage - or Cheny and Rove - or no one - he may simply be covering his own posterior - or he may have been lying simply out of caprice. We cannot know.

The pertinent legislation (§ 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources) specifically relates to those who have (or have had) "authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent". It is quite possible that Armitage did not have authorized access to classified information that identified Plame as a covert agent. It's quite possible that someone who did have such access leaked the information to Armitage, probably knowing that he is an outrageous gossip who would pass such a spicy bit of information on to someone at his earliest convenience.

The law also states that the person leaking such information "to anyone not authorized to receive classified information" must do so "knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent" [emphasis added]. It is again quite possible that a hapless yenta like Armitage had no idea what Plame's status was. In fact, when he spoke to Novak on July 8, 2003, he didn't even know a name - just that it was "Wilson's wife". I don't know about you, but Kivrot probably wouldn't even consider Armitage's disclosure a prelude to "outing".

Those most likely to have actually known that Plame was a covert agent were those privy to the 10 June, 2003, memo naming Valerie Wilson as Joe Wilson's wife and as a CIA officer (and which was marked "S-NF", indicating that the information was classified). That elite group would have included those on board Air Force One on July 7, 2003 (the day before Armitage leaked information to Novak, excluding Plame's name). Those people would have included Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Walter H. Kansteiner III, Andrew Card, and George W Bush.

Richard Armitage is a buffoon, but he is not necessarily a criminal. Due to the nature of grand juries - compounded by Libby's obstruction - we cannot know. I think I'm done reiterating the the definition of "obstruction of justice". You either comprehend it, I guess, or you don't. As the Arabs say, "If a camel is not thirsty, it is foolish to force it to drink."

You and I can speculate about Armitage's guilt all we like. It can never be anything more than speculation. Libby's guilt, on the other hand, has been proved.


Even if it later turned out there was no "underlying crime"? :-


As to your most recent post, yes, it was the Attorney General's office that instigated the investigation and not Ashcroft personally. (It is worth noting, though, that Comey is hardly a Democratic partisan, either - though, as the chief protagonist in Martha Stewart's obstruction trial, he did say that "this criminal case is about lying", so he might not be that sympathetic to the Libby apologists.) And, true, calling it "the Bush administration's CIA" was a bit of a stretch. I just didn't want any uninformed observers to imagine that the "witch-hunt" was somehow engineered by opposition partisans - which is certainly the spin that most of Libby's defenders have been implying. If this is, indeed, a witch-hunt rather than a serious, if stymied, investigation, it is a witch-hunt that the Bush administration brought on itself.

And I didn't mean to imply that I had been singled out for partisan, political name-calling. On the contrary, I felt you were going for softer targets. :D I appreciate that your time is constrained - as is mine. That's why I try to pick my battles fairly judiciously. It may be easier to rebut someone who is simply resorting to name-calling, but I find it less of a challenge - and much less constructive, as debates go.

Finally - and honestly - do you believe that President Bush commuted Libby's sentence for no other reason but that, on legal grounds, there should never have been a trial in the first place? It's all very well for you to somehow construe events in order to make such a case after the fact, but do you really believe that is what motivated Bush? (I'm asking for pure opinion here - no foundation required. :wink2: )


A final note to Kivrot: The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 cited above was passed, in large part, due to the disclosure of the identity of Richard S. Welch, the CIA Station Chief in Greece, in 1975. Welch was murdered by Marxist terrorists and many (including then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush) blamed his death on the disclosure of his identity in Philip Agee's CounterSpy magazine. They had published his name. No photo - just the name. You must be a huge Agee fan, yeah? Were you wandering about at the time, muttering, "Michael Collins, Michael Collins, Michael Collins..."?


EDITED TO FIX MASSIVE TAG ERROR AND STUFF

I see what you described as a filtering process that weeds out persons with opinions that might influence their vote. But this really lies at the heart of jury selection itself, doesn't it? Its worthy of another thread almost.

But your main concern here is that the jury wasn't allowed to consider everything, just the evidence that pertained to the perjury. You later go on to argue that the case itself was"immaterial." Unfortunately, I think this is the beginning of the end, at least for that arguement.

You see, whether or not the lies were "material" was a part of the trial itself. Let me illustrate.

The definition of perjury, as cited by you and wikipedia, states:

In order to show this to a jury, we assume Fitzgerald had to prove Libby guilty of the legal definition of perjury. In which case, you cannot seperate the lie and its relevancy, perjury itself is lying about something thats relevant.

One cannot simultaneously claim Libby is guilty of perjury but that the lies were not relevant. It is built into the definition of perjury itself that the lies are relevant.

To further clarify, when we say "Scooter Libby is guilty of perjury," we are saying Scooter Libby is guilty of " the act of lying or making verifiably false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law or in any of various sworn statements in writing."

The materialness, I'm afraid, was part of the trail, not part of the decision to go to trial.

Wertz:

You wrote in reply to my one remark:

"Please tell me you are not serious. Are you familiar with the law? We are talking about disclosing the identity of a covert agent - not outing some celebrity. It doesn't matter that her photo appeared in Vanity Fair or the New York Post or the Weekly World News. What matters is that the identity of a covert agent was disclosed to the press - that this information was thereby disclosed to every intelligence agency in the world - VEVAK, the ISI, the KGB, Mossad, the NSB, Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah - you name it. What - you think it would be fine if someone in the Vice President's office or the Department of State published a list of names of every covert agent in the CIA on the front page of Washington Times? You wouldn't think that was a serious breach of the law? Or would you? What if it was only two hundred names? Fifty? A dozen? When does the disclosure of covert agents' identities stop being a crime as far as you're concerned? Is it only when the agent is the wife of someone you dislike?"

First, yes, I am serious. As for my familiarity with the law, well, I not only went to law school, I passed the bar and have served as an attorney for 15 years. The law says, well, there has been no criminal prosecution here for disclosing the identity of a covert agent, yes? The law does not otherwise presume the crime, but the opposite. All that has happened here so far is that during the course of the investigation of suspected criminal activity, somebody lied, which doesn't mean that the suspected crime necessarily occurred, only that during the course of the investigation of the suspected crime, somebody lied. There may otherwise have been a motive for the lying separate and apart from the suspected criminal activity, and Mr. Fitzgerald, you, and I simply cannot say otherwise, as we aren't one Scooter Libby and so don't know why he lied [and even if he told us why he lied, well, he could still be lying, and that apart from any conviction for perjury].

As for intelligence agencies, so what, they have her name? What happens if her passport says that she's Rebecca Holton? You need the face. Some already have her face, as the Russians already know who she is and what she looks like. So does Fidel Castro. Anyone else interested could have found out by simply trying to obtain their own photo, with their own camera, following Joe Wilson's pre-Novak report in the NYT that he was sent to Niger at the behest of the CIA. That is the latest that any outing occurred, deny it though you might like. Anyone who understands the first thing about intelligence and counter-intelligence operations knows that as soon as Joe Wilson said that he worked for the CIA, even if only on a self-reported one time basis, well, everyone, you and me included, should we ever get near him, becomes suspect. That otherwise seemingly innocent "contact" and "communication" with you or me, and Joe, in the elevator of that one commercial building might not be so innocent, since maybe this is the drop [you or I have a microdisk that we need pass to Joe]. No one in their right mind otherwise ever confirms for anyone that they worked for the CIA. At least if one wishes to continue in covert operations.

And you do see the true problem here, yes? Once Joe outed himself, he outed everyone who ever came in contact with him. Work the chain backwards. The US Ambassador part actually makes this irrelevant, since that alone makes the man suspect, and so too his wife [read Tom Clancy's Cardinal of the Kremlin, where we do have our husband and wife spy team at the US Embassy in Moscow, with "Cardinal" being our Russian spy's code-name], but while irrelevant for him, think of your more non-descript soul. That's why when these "retired" idiots write books and appear on television and out themselves, well, work the chain backwards. This man is CIA, where has he been his career? Pass the the book, the article, what have you, and that all important picture, around to a whole host of people and entities, with the question attached, has anyone ever seen this man before? If so, then everyone who had contact with him becomes suspect and will be the subject of counterintelligence investigation.

This same phenomenon occurs when vain souls such as Senator Leahy go on television and report that we have the other side's communications penetrated and so were able to track down the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking by listening in to one Hosni Mubarak's telephone calls. Good counterintelligence agents that they are, well, the Egyptian intelligence service[s] found the penetration and reportedly did away with, as in, dead as a door nail, our penetrating man in Egypt. I remember that one well, since I was, going back to my familiarity with the law, in law school at the time, and the story had already broke a wee bit down south in San Diego, and I was aware of the furor and the rest, and then for the first time I had occasion to see the talk show where Senator Leahy passed a sentence of death on our man in Egypt. And I remember it well because, sorry, first, I can still see the show in my mind, and I can still hear his voice. The reason for that and the memory at large is that it was that day, at that moment, when I truly learned why vanity is one of the seven deadly sins. He wasn't on television to score partisan points, there was no Dems versus Repubs that day, nope, sorry, but Pat just had to go on the television so that he might show us that he was special because he had prior knowledge of something rather dramatic and important before you, me, and most of the rest of America and the world did. I can't find anything dating from the time, though such is probably owing to the timing of the event in question, ie., Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet, but here is a write up from Free Republic:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/699093/posts

So sometimes you don't need the face or the name that means nothing, as once you say that we've got them penetrated, good souls that they are, they will check to see if you are correct, and in Egypt they did so, and so we lost our penetration and our penetrating man in Egypt. And if after all that Pat has done in this respect, he can still be US Senator, then I have zero problem with the commutation here. None whatsover. Valerie was outed as the wife of a [former] US Ambassador long ago. Pat Leahy outed our man in Egypt, and without providing either the name or the face, but no need for the same, since the "disclosure" of the penetration was enough for what the law in other contexts would call the "inevitable discovery". In the absence of any partisan prejudice on your part, but instead in the clear light of a critical, reasoned, and moral thought process, I trust you to see the point that I'm making. You will otherwise have to take on faith the proposition that should this case have involved a true "outing", that I would be even more angry and upset than you. I mean, I pray that I never have occasion to meet Mr. Leahy, since if I do, our meeting won't be civil on my part, and it's not because he's on the "left", a "lib", and/or a "Dem", no, that would be much too vain, and so only because he didn't have the good sense to keep his brother and our man in Egypt alive.

Lastly, I don't otherwise "dislike" Valierie. Joe is a different story, and I dislike him in this respect for the same reason that I dislike Jimmy Carter in this respect, with that reason being that neither of them know when to shut up. By way of a brief comparison, whatever else it is that I think of Slick Willie, I will credit him for understanding what every former President but Jimmy C has understood, which is that former Presidents don't critize and oppose the sitting President in relation to certain spheres of activity. And so back to why no concern here for me, in addition to my firm conviction that someone had already been outed and some others knew that and also that, as a result, no harm could or would come to Valerie or anyone else from any mention of her name, well, Joe needed to receive something in the way of discipline, as one in his position simply does not write the NYT piece. There's that, and the proposition which I know to be true beyond any reasonable dispute, to wit, the legal system is singularly unsuited to address the res gestae at issue in this instance.

First, was the sentence in the Libby case "excessive"?

Rasmussin has been kinder to Bush than some other polls in recent years. Apparently, the vast majority of people do not think the sentence was too harsh.



Rasmussin, Bush Favorability Ratings

Rasmussin Poll, 21% Favor Libby Commutation

Link to Rasmussin Bush Impeachment Poll

Ok, so only 21% of the public thinks Bush acted appropriately and 39% want him gone. It seems mostly Republican whiners, like The National Review, are taking Bush’s side.

That's, is it? Somebody merely lied under oath. Somebody was so frivolous as to lie to the FBI. No biggie, right? Come on, Kivrot, one doesn't need a law degree to figure out that perjury and making false statements are crimes. And a jury of Irving Lewis Libby's peers found that his lies during a criminal investigation were both deliberate and material.

I've never argued that Libby's indictment and conviction imply that a crime necessarily occurred. In fact, I have only ever argued that Libby's perjury and false statements may have made it impossible to determine whether a crime had occurred or not - and who may or may not have been guilty of committing the crime in question. Isn't this why we treat - or used to treat - perjury and obstruction so seriously?


If you are arguing that every wife of every ambassador that every president has ever appointed is a potential CIA agent because of some Jack Ryan novel, then perhaps we should be prosecuting Tom Clancey, the biggest "outer" of them all. Then again, if we accept your reductio ad absurdum argument, I guess Gerald Ford was "the leaker" in this case - after all, he gave Wilson his first foreign service position, thereby exposing all three of his eventual wives as potential covert CIA operatives. :wacko: As a lawyer, you surely appreciate that apagogical arguments don't carry much weight.

But I'm a bit confused here. You were originally arguing that Plame wasn't "outed" until after her picture was published on the cover [sic] of Vanity Fair. Now you seem to be arguing that she was "outed" when she married Joe Wilson because Tom Clancey revealed that ambassador's wives make great Bond girls. Which is it? Ach - it doesn't really matter. Either way, it's immaterial. And it is in no way exculpatory in relation to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Where and when Plame was "outed" is immaterial; whether her "outing" could have had serious devastating consequences or not is immaterial; whether Plame's identity was already known to members of foreign intelligence agencies or not is immaterial. The law, Kivrot, simply states that it is illegal for anyone with authorized access to classified information to intentionally disclose any information (even a mere name) identifying a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive that information. There are no qualifying clauses in the legislation - no exceptions based on the storylines of Tom Clancey novels. Someone with access to classified information identifying a covert agent disclosed that information to persons not authorized to receive such information. Period.

Somewhere along the line, Kivrot, a crime was committed - and it was probably not by the fatuous Richard Armitage. That's why the CIA and the Attorney General's office launched an investigation into the crime. And, during the investigation of that federal crime, "Scooter" Libby lied under oath, made false statements to the FBI (just like Martha Stewart, whose sentence President Bush did not find "excessive"), and obstructed justice. I don't see what is so difficult to grasp here - especially for an attorney. I'm guessing that you don't practice criminal law.

As for Leahy, well start a thread about him, if you like. You may well find me agreeing with you overall. But to argue that Libby shouldn't be punished because someone in an unrelated case wasn't punished is ludicrous. The failure to bring charges against someone for a certain crime does not set a legal precedent exempting everyone else who may ever commit the same crime from prosecution. Where did you get your law degree?


In relation to the perjury and false statements charges, I don't see how res gestae even figures. We're talking about the sworn testimony of nine witnesses contradicting the sworn statements of one suspect. Lewis Libby lied under oath to a grand jury - and his lies were found to be both deliberate and material. The seriousness of the underlying crime - or whether there even was an underlying crime - is immaterial in relation to perjuring oneself before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation. Whether you feel that investigation was warranted or not, Kivrot, I see no gravamen issues here in relation to the crimes for which Libby was indicted, tried, and found guilty. So, again, how does res gestae even figure?