The Apologists Go Forth

I’m probably going to be either linking to or excerpting part of this great, if lengthy, post by Hunter at The Daily Kos concerning Dubya’s pardon of Scooter Libby for a long time to come. This is especially true since I expect a torrent of material in the vein of this dreck from Ron Fournier of Time far into the future.

We might as well get used to it now, since the muck will only get deeper. Here is how it began in the Time column…

"This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a brazen statement from a woman entangled in many Clinton White House scandals, including the final one: On his last day in office, President Clinton granted 140 pardons and 36 commutations, many of them controversial.

One of those pardoned was Marc Rich, who had fled the country after being indicted for tax evasion and whose wife had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes.

Clinton's half brother, Roger, who was convicted of distributing cocaine and lobbied the White House on behalf of others, also received a pardon.

Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid tens of thousands of dollars in his successful bid to win pardons for a businessman under investigation for money laundering and a commutation for a convicted drug trafficker. Her other brother, Tony, lobbied successfully for clemency on behalf of a couple convicted of bank fraud.

Concerning the pardon of Marc Rich, Clinton provided eight reasons for the pardon here, and even though I think some of the reasons are specious, it shows a hell of a lot more gray area than the Libby pardon (with Rich’s pardon coming at the end of Clinton’s presidency, so the only influence Rich or his wife Denise could have exerted would be pertaining to Clinton’s presidential library).

And as noted here, Henry Waxman held a hearing on the Rich pardon and noted that Bush Sr. pardoned financier Armand Hammer not long after receiving a campaign contribution, though I know of no one who has pointed that out (and I also know of few people who pointed out Poppy’s pardon of the Iran-Contra crooks, which also took place at the end of Sr.’s term, like Rich’s pardon by Clinton - and by the way, I won't wait breathlessly for the Repugs to request a hearing on the Libby pardon or else I will surely suffocate).

And by the way (as noted here), Roger Clinton was pardoned after he served his entire sentence for drug charges the decade before (and “lobbying the White House on behalf of others” is definitely not a crime, and there were pardons proposed by Roger Clinton denied by the president, as noted here – some truly sleazy editing going on here by Time). And when someone can tell me that Hugh Rodham and HRC’s brother Tony were accused and/or convicted of a crime for lobbying on behalf of their clients, please let me know; I’ve searched extensively and I haven’t been able to find anything to support that.

As Hunter noted in his Kos post, Dubya, by commuting Libby’s sentence (the official pardon will come later) and thus condoning his obstruction of justice, basically derailed an investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald into what quite likely was a felony committed by the office of Dick Cheney in outing a covert spy. And this was an investigation into Dubya’s administration in the middle of his second term, not at the end of his presidency.

The contempt Dubya showed for the verdict of the jury and the sentence imposed by Judge Reggie Walton could not be more obvious. The only way Clinton could have measured up to this would have been if he’d sought the removal of special prosecutor and pornographer Kenneth Starr in the middle of the Monica Whatsername investigation (totally deserved, but it would have been a tacit admission of guilt on Clinton’s part).

Pretend Democrat Michael Kinsley weighed in with similar sentiments in today’s New York Times, which are equally uninformed and erroneous. Only the Libby pardon stands as a power grab by Dubya to bring the judiciary totally under heel in subservience to his criminal regime – mentioning anything else in a similar context is ridiculous. Aside from The Saturday Night Massacre, nothing else stands in comparison (pointed out by Keith Olbermann in his appropriately scathing Special Comment here – I believe he also pointed out that Libby has a legal defense fund of about $5 million, so he won’t have to pay any of the $250 K fine either).