The more I keep pondering on the whole Scooter Libby “clemency,” the more it keeps irking.
I have to quote from a Kung Fu Monkey link Marn cited commented in my original post on the subject.
Then Scooter gets his sentence commuted. Oh, and just to make sure we’re clear on where I stand here, let me paraphrase Glenn Greenwald —
“The Libby prosecution clearly was the dirty work of the leftist anti-war movement in this country, just as Cohen describes. After all, the reason Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate this matter was because a left-wing government agency (known as the “Central Intelligence Agency”) filed a criminal referral with the Justice Department, as the MoveOn-sympathizer CIA officials were apparently unhappy about the public unmasking of one of their covert agents.
In response, Bush’s left-wing anti-war Attorney General, John Ashcroft, judged the matter serious enough to recuse himself, leading Bush’s left-wing anti-war Deputy Attorney General, James Comey, to conclude that a Special Prosecutor was needed. In turn, Comey appointed Fitzgerald, the left-wing anti-war Republican Prosecutor and Bush appointee, who secured a conviction of Libby, in response to which left-wing anti-war Bush appointee Judge Reggie Walton imposed Libby’s sentence.”
(The Greenwald article is worth actually reading, btw.)
As KFM notes, it’s unlikely that Libby will suffer any other significant harm. Even assuming his appeal fails (the likelihood of which is what led a federal appeals court to tell him he had to wait out the process in prison, which is what five hours later prompted the clemency), it’s highly unlikely that Libby will be out a penny of his own money in fines. Even if disbarred, it’s quite likely he’ll get a nice job in some think tank or university setting. You don’t go from being the VP’s right hand man to being a bum on the street just because you obstructed justice. The hue and cry from the Administration and its supporters make it clear that there are plenty of people who think Libby did no wrong.
Which is the key of KFM’s post:
They have found the “exploit” within the United States Government. As I watched Congressmen and Senators stumble and fumble and thrash, unable to bring to heel men and women who were plainly lying to them under oath, unable to eject from public office toadies of a boot-licking expertise unseen since Versailles, it struck me. The sheer, simple elegance of it. The “exploit”.
The exploit is shame.
Our representatives — and to a great degree we as a culture — are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man’s corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty … dammmnnnn.
We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying “You don’t have the balls to take down a government. You don’t have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don’t. What’s beyond that abyss — what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation — terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way.”
Whether they state it that boldly, or simply assert, “It was all for National Security, the Ends justify the Means, and we would do it — have done it — will do it again, with clean consciences and no reprisals or accountability,” it’s clear that the Administration does not feel it is accountable to or bound by the law. The ends really don’t matter — whether you believe the Administration is our last hope against war and terror or believe they are a bunch of pocket-lining thugs — but the grotesque dismissal of any reigning in of the means used in pursuit of those ends is disastrous.
There is a reason for the law, at least as framed in this country. It is to protect the weak from the strong, to restrict the use of power for whatever reason. Because, ultimately, even if the wielders of unrestrained power are saints, that power will be misused. It will fall into the hands of demons, sooner or later. Acton’s maxim on absolute power corrupting absolutely doesn’t have to apply to a given individual (though it usually does); it can apply to an institution. And as sure as God made little green apples, George Bush’s eight-year exercise of power, and dismissal of restraints on it, before or after the fact, will be used as precedents and justifications by future presidents, Republican or Democrat, for their own “ends.” And even if you think George Bush is a saint, how long of a string of saints are we likely to see?
It’s not even that the Scooter Libby case is the end of the world per se. Libby didn’t personally assassinate Valerie Plame, or get caught eating dead puppies stolen from little Iraqi children, or selling nuclear secrets to Iran, or whatever. Not to dismiss the importance of lying to Congress and trying to cover-up and stall an investigation, but you almost expect that from political operatives.
No, in this case, it’s not the crime, not even the cover-up, but the casual clemency that sticks in the craw of the body politic, that teaches the lesson to politicians and kids alike that even in the unlikely circumstance that you do get caught out in trying to block an investigation, it won’t matter — you won’t be punished. Even if a prosecution is successful, and a jury says you’re guilty, you won’t do a day in prison. The Big Boys will watch out for you. Next time you get a subpoena from Congress or have to testify in front of a grand jury or get grilled by the Dept. of (“I don’t recall”) Justice — toss back a few mimosas, and don’t sweat it — there’s plenty of clemency and (not yet ruled out) pardons sitting in the file cabinet waiting to have your name filled in.
Disgusting and sad and infuriating all at once. Because you just know that there’s more of this sort of thing that’s going to happen over the next year and change, and no matter what half-hearted investigations get kicked off after Bush leaves the White House, the legal bases will all be covered, the blanket pardons will have been issued, and there will be no meaningful punishment, just the wailing from the graves of the Founding Fathers, despairing in what’s been done with their nation.
Hear, hear!
That being said you also have a complacent press that has an ingrained hated of “Dirty F’n Hippies” or anything left of Goldwater. First off think of all the fake Clinton scandals that the press constantly harrumphed about and how the press is now with Bush. The Roberts and Alito nominations that they backed and now are “Shocked” that Roberts and Alito made rulings for purely political reasons just like the DFH’s said they would. The press in this country is useless for the most part when they are in a constant state of surprise over how the Bush Regime rules, and then have the vapours whenever anyone on the Left points out that this was what they had been screaming about at the time when something could have been done about it.
No, Bush will get a pass and then if a Dem gets elected in ’08 the “Clinton” rules will be back in play and every little miss-step (real or imagined) will be broadcast from the highest towers 24/7. Remember how much bile was spilled over Gore using the wrong phone to solicit contributions as VP and we now have one that thinks he is not bound by the constitution and the only places that this story is pursued is two Comedy Shows and Olbermann.
No, the press has failed us by not even attempting to shame those in power and being cowed at every turn by being threatened with not being one of the cool kids anymore.
Also Dave, Glenn Greenwald is worth reading every day.
The Scooter Libby clemency suggests to me that the Bush Administration doesn’t really respect the rule of law. As you say, ***Dave, it indicates that they believe the ends justify the means and that they take a rather short-sighted view of the ends and ignore the potential consequences of their endorsement of certain means. This suggests to me that their talk of the rule of law in the arena of international diplomacy is a sham, just another means they are using to obtain their ends, and not something they genuinely believe is a good thing. This all suggests to me that we should pay greater attention to presidential candidates’ basic beliefs and less to their positions on particular current issues — the current issues will change during the course of a president’s time in office, but the basic beliefs will stay the same.
As for BD’s claim that the press is biased to the right, it seems to me that both the left and the right claim that the press is biased against them, and both sides can present pretty convincing evidence for their case. (See e.g. this article in Slate, this report of a UCLA study on Media Bias, or this Freakonomics blog entry.) If the press is accused of being biased by both the right and the left, it could mean that the press is doing a good job of digging up everybody’s dirt or it could mean that they are doing a very bad job and are missing lots of important stories. Either way, it seems to me to indicate that the press is not significantly biased in one direction or the other. Rather, claims of press bias seem to me to tell us more about those who are making the claims than they do about the press. Personally, I think there are some reporters who are biased, some who are not very careful about getting the whole story, and some who do a very good job of doing unbiased writing. I think the claims of press bias reflect how people interact with the press: the press is huge and diverse, most people only see a relatively small slice of all that is reported on a given subject, and most people merely nod when they see something in the press that they agree with, but they get pretty riled up when they see something in the press that they disagree with. While I think it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for press bias given the importance of the press in modern society, it seems to me that there isn’t good evidence for overall press bias right now, while there is good evidence for particular cases of biased (or careless) reporting. So I think we should start looking to evaluate individual writers and articles for bias rather than some vast conspiracy of the press.
When Doyce starts posting politics, you know it’s serious.
Okay, the UCLA study is insane:
So, discounting all the gossip and lies that Drudge prints, it is liberal….great study there UCLA.
Media Matters Take on the Insane UCLA Media Bias Study.
I will have to agree that any study conducted by folks that have been on take from AEI, the Hoover Institute, and the Heritage Foudation are going to be a bit….Biased.
In other news, Scooter managed to use $250K of the $4mil raised for his Legal Defense Fund to pay off his fine today.
As predicted.
And, hell, depending on the terms of the Fund, he might be able to just retire on the remaining $3.75MM — regardless of whether the appeal succeeds or the president pardons him.
BD’s right to suggest that the UCLA study I cited earlier is flawed. I didn’t look into it carefully enough. But when he says
that’s just the fallacy of guilt by association. It’s one of several claims that the Media Matters article he cites makes, and while I think some of their arguments for the flawed nature of the UCLA article are good, I think others are as flawed as the article they are critiquing.
The best evidence that the UCLA study is flawed is that it mis-categorizes some institutions. For example it classifies the ACLU as having a slightly conservative bias.
However, my main point was that I doubt that there is an overall press bias in either direction. Both liberals and conservatives love to claim that the press is biased against them, and both groups can point to things that will support their case. If both sides of the political spectrum are pissed off at the press, this suggests to me that there isn’t a significant bias in one direction or the other.
The Media Matters article that BD cites quotes a study in the Journal of Communication as saying
That’s much better support for my claim than anything I found earlier.
I take it BD’s point in suggesting that there is a conservative bias in the press was to support the idea that Scooter Libby will get off scot free after all is said and done. I think this is probably right, but I attribute it to complacency and/or laziness among the voting public more than I do to press bias. If the public expressed enough interest in this case, the media would pursue it to get the ratings. So the question is: why aren’t the voters more outraged about this?
It depends on your definitions, I suspect. The ACLU could be construed as a “slightly conservative” organization based on its protection of fundamental civil liberties, and that against all comers (e.g., protecting the right of Nazis to march in Skokie). If you only use a single axis to map things out (liberal vs conservative) you’re going to end up with some serious distortions of this sort; the ACLU is more located along the libertarian/authoritarian axis than on the conservative/liberal one.
According to the latest press reports I’ve read, it was still unclear where the source of the money was (Libby, a direct supporter, or the legal defense fund). Since money is fungible in most cases, it’s probably a moot point.
More entertaining (in a cynical way) is the suggestion by the sentencing judge that, lacking any actual prison time, the probation sentence (two years) may be off the table, too. Which would mean that, aside from a criminal conviction (one which many “conservatives” claim is meaningless and “political”), Libby is essentially off the hook.