James Wigderson of Wigderson’s Library & Pub, a generally thoughtful rightwing website out of Waukesha, takes issue with the perceived inconsistency from two of my pieces on Paris Hilton and Lewis Libby.
On Paris Hilton (06/09), Wigderson accurately notes my reaction to her incarceration, quoting, “Taking away someone’s liberty should be a last resort of a society to inflict upon its citizens. But in America, it’s done with appalling frequency: By prosecutors looking to inflate their win-loss record, by judges for whom taking away someone’s liberty can make them look tough, and by spectator citizens for whom watching Hilton is a sick sideshow.”
And on Scooter Libby (07/02),
If there were any doubt that this administration believes that laws and rules are for other people, and that this government is theirs' to rule as they please, such doubts must be cast aside.
We can no longer credibly assert that this is our government; this is a cabal accountable to no one; we do not live a democracy under this administration.
Wigderson scoffs at this perceived inconsistency in the treatment of these two defendants, jeering: “We put too many people in prison, unless they're Republicans solely guilty of having a different memory of a phone conversation than Tim Russert. Maybe if Libby appeared in porn films.”
Actually, the two cases are clearly different, and Wigderson’s flippant comment echoes rightwing talking points on Libby revealing a tendentious disdain for facts.
Libby is guilty on a five-count federal indictment of obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury committed in the criminal investigation of the blowing of a CIA operative’s cover who was working on keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.
Revealing Valerie Plame’s identity was done in retaliation for her husband’s knocking down the lie that uranium was smuggled out of Africa for use in Saddam’s nuclear weapons program, an alleged program now discredited by all but the most partisan of commentators.
Of-course Hilton was convicted of reckless driving and violation of parole; somehow I just cannot see the equivalence of her misdemeanor with his five federal felonies that protected the outing of a NOC CIA agent and obstructed the CIA-requested DoJ investigation into this act of treason.
In Wigderson’s mind and those of many Republicans’, I guess that makes me an anti-Republican partisan, along with the CIA, elements of the FBI and the DoJ, the jurors, the Bush-appointed federal district judge, and the three-member appellate panel.
Though Libby’s misrepresentations about NBC reporter Tim Russert were included in the 22-page indictment, I suggest that Mr. Wigderson read the indictment in full; other journalists like Miller and Cooper were more central to the case, and Libby’s lies made to the Grand Jury and FBI were many and obvious.
Bush gave Libby his commutation even as Libby was appealing his case and had not served any of his 33-month prison sentence. As a NYT editorial reads, “Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.”
Political cover-ups like the extraordinary Libby commutation committed outside of DoJ guidelines do trouble me.
They ought to trouble Wigderson, no matter the political party involved.
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Showing posts with label Scooter Libby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scooter Libby. Show all posts
Jul 3, 2007
The White House Phone Number Is ...
202 456-1414
"It is time for the American people to be heard — I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law." — Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del, reacting to the commutation of Lewis Libby who both leaked and covered up the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name after the agent's husband had exposed one of the main lies used to sell the Iraq war.
Call 202 456-1414.
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Jul 2, 2007
Bush Commutes Libby Sentence
Sure you have heard by now. If there were any doubt that this administration believes that laws and rules are for other people, and that this government is theirs' to rule as they please, such doubts must be cast aside.We can no longer credibly assert that this is our government; this is a cabal accountable to no one; we do not live a democracy under this administration.
Statement by the President
The White House Office of the Press Secretary
Monday, July 2, 2007; 5:53 PM
The White House Office of the Press Secretary
Monday, July 2, 2007; 5:53 PM
The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today rejected Lewis Libby's request to remain free on bail while pursuing his appeals for the serious convictions of perjury and obstruction of justice. As a result, Mr. Libby will be required to turn himself over to the Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his prison sentence.
I have said throughout this process that it would not be appropriate to comment or intervene in this case until Mr. Libby's appeals have been exhausted. But with the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.
From the very beginning of the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, I made it clear to the White House staff and anyone serving in my administration that I expected full cooperation with the Justice Department. Dozens of White House staff and administration officials dutifully cooperated.
After the investigation was under way, the Justice Department appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Counsel in charge of the case. Mr. Fitzgerald is a highly qualified, professional prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities as charged.
This case has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the investigation have argued that a special counsel should not have been appointed, nor should the investigation have been pursued after the Justice Department learned who leaked Ms. Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak.
Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation. Finally, critics say the punishment does not fit the crime:
Mr. Libby was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service and was handed a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury.
Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public
trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told
the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.
Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important
points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I
am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.
Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.
I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.
My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.
The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby's case is an appropriate exercise of this power.
###
Jun 24, 2007
Libby Apologists Are A Gift to Anthropologists Everywhere
Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)
Libby Apologists Are A Gift to Anthropologists Everywhere
By RJ Eskow
If I were studying sociology or anthropology I'd drop everything right now and run to Washington, DC. There's a great piece to be written about what Scooter Libby's defenders reveal about that city's power elite.
(Think "Mean Girls" meets "All the President's Men.") What an opportunity: The response to perceived attack on one of the tribe is revealing a hidden culture to the world.
Social scientists will tell you that most communities are divided into at least two groups, insiders and interlopers. Washington is no exception. "He came in and trashed the place," David Broder famously wrote of Bill Clinton, "and it wasn't his place." It's Scooter Libby's place, though. He's part of the capital's power elite, a culture with its own social hierarchy, folkways, and shared beliefs.
Anthropologists are fond of drawing "kinship charts" that document relationships and hierarchies within a tribe or community. A Washington "kinship chart" would show that the consanguineal loyalties of biological family have been replaced by webs of social intimacy and shared perceptions.
At the top of the DC chart are the designated leaders, the chieftains. The best way to get there is to have occupied a place in the hierarchy for a long time, after working your way up as apprentice to an earlier chief. A history of senior positions in past administrations fits the bill, hence the prominence of figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's why in some ways Cheney holds more totemic power in Washington than does Bush himself.
On the next line down come those who draw their power from the top-line leaders. That's where Scooter comes in, as a Cheney acolyte. That's where Mary Matalin shows up, too, as a long-time operative for Republican administrations.
The law school professors who authored a brief challenging the special prosecutor [1] in the Libby case appear on this line, too. They represent a long line of interest groups, think tanks, and academic institutions who benefit from the largesse of the top-line hierarchy through grants of power, funding, and/or support for cherished causes.
Newspaper publishers hold top-line status based on the institutions they control, while the writers and commentators who work for them appear several layers down in the chart.
On a practical level, the ability of these writers to survive professionally depends on the favors bestowed on them from their social superiors in government and the media. On a personal level, they identify emotionally with the tribe and react violently when any of its leaders are under attack.
This group's folkways are reinforced every day. Their kids go to the same schools. They go to the same restaurants and clubs. Their intimacy's been ritually celebrated at a thousand cocktail parties, with wine and hors d'oeuvres as the unconsecrated host. And judging from what we've heard lately, it seems that excoriating unruly outsiders (whether they're bloggers, Bill Clinton, or uncooperative voters) has replaced the ritual eating of an enemy's heart.
Maybe that's why writers like Richard Cohen can so casually commit what seems to be journalistic malpractice when writing about the Libby case.
For example, no matter how many times Patrick Fitzgerald repeats his belief that an underlying crime was committed in the Libby case, Cohen and his fellows will keep saying that Fitzgerald's asserted no such thing.
Why such misdirection, which appears to violate the Society of Professional Journalists' written code of ethics [2]? And now now Cohen seems to be asserting [3]that a Republican prosecutor and Republican judge are conducting a leftist show trial in retaliation for the war in Iraq.
That sort of twisted logic isn't unusual among Libby defenders. Why do people who are often smart thinkers and good writers allow themselves to bend the rules of logic and ethics in defense of someone like Libby?
Because people who do deceitful things often believe that they're obeying a higher ethical law. Often they're not even conscious of doing anything wrong. So when the Richard Cohens of the world repeatedly misstate the facts, one can only conclude that their belief in Libby's "decency" and the "unfairness" of the prosecution allows them to ignore both good journalism and the national good.
Tribe members consider Libby a decent public servant tricked by inquisitors into perjuring himself. Most other Americans recognize him for what he really is: a convict who convinced a Republican prosecutor and judge - and an entire jury - of his criminality, beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's the problem. Sometimes the pull of cultural beliefs is so strong that people can't even see facts that threaten their shared reality. I would guess that no journalist or pundit working in DC today - not Cohen, not Joe Klein, not David Broder - believes they are doing anything other than upholding their professional principles and serving the nation.
That's why they can't react to challenges without indignation, rage, or distortion: Those challenges undermine their shared reality, so the challengers must be personally attacked instead. Their identity becomes the topic. The result? Outsiders such as bloggers become the enemy tribe. The fact that these outsiders don't obey the group's social conventions only amplifies the outrage.
Mary Matalin's letter on behalf of Libby (co-signed by her husband James Carville) is an especially useful vein for reserchers in search of DC folklore.
"His wife and my husband share similar (presumably centrist Democratic) political views," Matalin writes. This speaks to "bipartisanship," a so-far mythical political movement extolled by Broder and others. Bipartisanship remains attractive to members of the insider group because it places greater importance on tribal standing than on heartfelt political values.
"Our service put great strains on our respective families," writes Ms. Matalin. This echoes a common theme in many of Mr. Libby's letters of support, which emphasizes the bonding ritual of long hours spent working in the corridors of power.
But it is in speaking of children that Ms. Matalin best articulates the folkways and loyalties of the DC tribe. She writes movingly of Libby's attempts to entertain children isolated in a "secure undisclosed location" one Halloween, and asks the judge to consider "what further justice would be served by additional devastation to them and the many other children who love Scooter."
This shouldn't need to be said, but let's be clear: Nobody wants Libby's children or their friends to suffer. It's tough to be the child of a felon. What I find striking about the Matalin letter is not its tender concern for children, which is admirable, but the underlying amorality shown by its inability to see the suffering of Valerie Plame Wilson's children or the many others hurt by Libby's actions. Those children are simply less real to her. Out of sight, out of mind. That's Ms. Matalin's problem, and it's Cohen's too.
Libby's lawyer reportedly tried to block the release of the letters written on his behalf by Matalin and such top-line chieftains as Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. His argument was that their publication would subject their authors to scorn and ridicule, especially by that hostile tribe known as "bloggers." Maybe, but I'm more concerned about making sure they're available to be catalogued, studied, and understood.
The underground folkways and practices of this particular tribe may not be this visible again for years. Graduate students, take note. This is your chance to study a culture that's rarely observed in the field. The more it's exposed to the light of day, the more it will be robbed of its power.
Any takers? It would be a good way to write your thesis - and help your country at the same time.
###
Libby Apologists Are A Gift to Anthropologists Everywhere
By RJ Eskow
If I were studying sociology or anthropology I'd drop everything right now and run to Washington, DC. There's a great piece to be written about what Scooter Libby's defenders reveal about that city's power elite.
(Think "Mean Girls" meets "All the President's Men.") What an opportunity: The response to perceived attack on one of the tribe is revealing a hidden culture to the world.
Social scientists will tell you that most communities are divided into at least two groups, insiders and interlopers. Washington is no exception. "He came in and trashed the place," David Broder famously wrote of Bill Clinton, "and it wasn't his place." It's Scooter Libby's place, though. He's part of the capital's power elite, a culture with its own social hierarchy, folkways, and shared beliefs.
Anthropologists are fond of drawing "kinship charts" that document relationships and hierarchies within a tribe or community. A Washington "kinship chart" would show that the consanguineal loyalties of biological family have been replaced by webs of social intimacy and shared perceptions.
At the top of the DC chart are the designated leaders, the chieftains. The best way to get there is to have occupied a place in the hierarchy for a long time, after working your way up as apprentice to an earlier chief. A history of senior positions in past administrations fits the bill, hence the prominence of figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's why in some ways Cheney holds more totemic power in Washington than does Bush himself.
On the next line down come those who draw their power from the top-line leaders. That's where Scooter comes in, as a Cheney acolyte. That's where Mary Matalin shows up, too, as a long-time operative for Republican administrations.
The law school professors who authored a brief challenging the special prosecutor [1] in the Libby case appear on this line, too. They represent a long line of interest groups, think tanks, and academic institutions who benefit from the largesse of the top-line hierarchy through grants of power, funding, and/or support for cherished causes.
Newspaper publishers hold top-line status based on the institutions they control, while the writers and commentators who work for them appear several layers down in the chart.
On a practical level, the ability of these writers to survive professionally depends on the favors bestowed on them from their social superiors in government and the media. On a personal level, they identify emotionally with the tribe and react violently when any of its leaders are under attack.
This group's folkways are reinforced every day. Their kids go to the same schools. They go to the same restaurants and clubs. Their intimacy's been ritually celebrated at a thousand cocktail parties, with wine and hors d'oeuvres as the unconsecrated host. And judging from what we've heard lately, it seems that excoriating unruly outsiders (whether they're bloggers, Bill Clinton, or uncooperative voters) has replaced the ritual eating of an enemy's heart.
Maybe that's why writers like Richard Cohen can so casually commit what seems to be journalistic malpractice when writing about the Libby case.
For example, no matter how many times Patrick Fitzgerald repeats his belief that an underlying crime was committed in the Libby case, Cohen and his fellows will keep saying that Fitzgerald's asserted no such thing.
Why such misdirection, which appears to violate the Society of Professional Journalists' written code of ethics [2]? And now now Cohen seems to be asserting [3]that a Republican prosecutor and Republican judge are conducting a leftist show trial in retaliation for the war in Iraq.
That sort of twisted logic isn't unusual among Libby defenders. Why do people who are often smart thinkers and good writers allow themselves to bend the rules of logic and ethics in defense of someone like Libby?
Because people who do deceitful things often believe that they're obeying a higher ethical law. Often they're not even conscious of doing anything wrong. So when the Richard Cohens of the world repeatedly misstate the facts, one can only conclude that their belief in Libby's "decency" and the "unfairness" of the prosecution allows them to ignore both good journalism and the national good.
Tribe members consider Libby a decent public servant tricked by inquisitors into perjuring himself. Most other Americans recognize him for what he really is: a convict who convinced a Republican prosecutor and judge - and an entire jury - of his criminality, beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's the problem. Sometimes the pull of cultural beliefs is so strong that people can't even see facts that threaten their shared reality. I would guess that no journalist or pundit working in DC today - not Cohen, not Joe Klein, not David Broder - believes they are doing anything other than upholding their professional principles and serving the nation.
That's why they can't react to challenges without indignation, rage, or distortion: Those challenges undermine their shared reality, so the challengers must be personally attacked instead. Their identity becomes the topic. The result? Outsiders such as bloggers become the enemy tribe. The fact that these outsiders don't obey the group's social conventions only amplifies the outrage.
Mary Matalin's letter on behalf of Libby (co-signed by her husband James Carville) is an especially useful vein for reserchers in search of DC folklore.
"His wife and my husband share similar (presumably centrist Democratic) political views," Matalin writes. This speaks to "bipartisanship," a so-far mythical political movement extolled by Broder and others. Bipartisanship remains attractive to members of the insider group because it places greater importance on tribal standing than on heartfelt political values.
"Our service put great strains on our respective families," writes Ms. Matalin. This echoes a common theme in many of Mr. Libby's letters of support, which emphasizes the bonding ritual of long hours spent working in the corridors of power.
But it is in speaking of children that Ms. Matalin best articulates the folkways and loyalties of the DC tribe. She writes movingly of Libby's attempts to entertain children isolated in a "secure undisclosed location" one Halloween, and asks the judge to consider "what further justice would be served by additional devastation to them and the many other children who love Scooter."
This shouldn't need to be said, but let's be clear: Nobody wants Libby's children or their friends to suffer. It's tough to be the child of a felon. What I find striking about the Matalin letter is not its tender concern for children, which is admirable, but the underlying amorality shown by its inability to see the suffering of Valerie Plame Wilson's children or the many others hurt by Libby's actions. Those children are simply less real to her. Out of sight, out of mind. That's Ms. Matalin's problem, and it's Cohen's too.
Libby's lawyer reportedly tried to block the release of the letters written on his behalf by Matalin and such top-line chieftains as Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. His argument was that their publication would subject their authors to scorn and ridicule, especially by that hostile tribe known as "bloggers." Maybe, but I'm more concerned about making sure they're available to be catalogued, studied, and understood.
The underground folkways and practices of this particular tribe may not be this visible again for years. Graduate students, take note. This is your chance to study a culture that's rarely observed in the field. The more it's exposed to the light of day, the more it will be robbed of its power.
Any takers? It would be a good way to write your thesis - and help your country at the same time.
###
Jun 17, 2007
The MAeLstrom
[A scan of news articles and commentary on the internet.]Scooter Libby Love Letters, Washington elite petition judge on behalf of convicted Cheney aide: The Smoking Gun — The Smoking Gun houses the letters asking that Lewis Libby should lie with impunity. Frank Rich writes: But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon."
Soldiers Haunted by War Struggle to Get Care — Dana Priest and Anne Hull lay out in the Washington Post how troops who are returning from the battlefield with psychological wounds find a mental-health system that makes healing difficult.
More US Personnel Killed in Iraq than Reported — John R Moffett writes at opednews.com that, "The U.S. military has never released complete statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks on privately guarded convoys. The military deleted casualty figures from reports ... the military wanted to hide information showing that private guards were fighting and dying in large numbers because it would be perceived as bad news."
Wisconsin Republican Committee Chair May Kill Bill Helping Rape Victims — Mobile’s Take blog notes: “This Bill will allow rape victims in Wisconsin to be given information about and access to emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.” The Neanderthal in question who wants to kill the popular rape victim-assistance bill is state Rep. Mark Gundrum (R-New Berlin).
The General’s Report — Seymour M. Hersh writes: “How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties,” in the New Yorker.
Judge orders domestic surveillance docs public — From ThinkProgress: “Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.”
The April request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation asked the FBI to turn over documents related to its misuse of National Security Letters, self-issued subpoenas that don’t need a judge’s approval and which can get financial, phone and internet records. Recipients of the letters are forbidden by law from ever telling anyone other than their lawyer that they received the request. Though initially warned initially to use this power sparingly, FBI agents issued more than 47,000 in 2005, more than half of which targeted Americans. Information obtained from the requests, which need only be certified by the agency to be 'relevant' to an investigation, are dumped into a data-mining warehouse for perpetuity."
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