Bush commutes Libby's sentence (ethics, treason, how much, money)

[burdell]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

I do kinda' recall from a fading memory ... since it got only a little bit of press ... that "bubba" was impeached for committing perjury, and subsequently lost his license to the bar.

IMO, that's a comparable trial process as to what Scooter went through in the Federal courtroom ... if not more stringent.

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Uh, let's see. "bubba" was accused of lying about something that really should not have been a public matter in the first place and never convicted and that's comparable to a man being convicted in a Federal Court about lying in a matter involving national security?

Dramamine! Quick! I'm getting dizzy from the spin

[burdell]

Originally Posted by tnbound2day

This "commuting" of Libby's sentence was not above the law. It is well within his rights as a president. Its a right I absolutely don't like, for any president to be able to void a judgement made by a court simply by deciding and having no one else to review and approve the decision.

That being said, GWB has SO FAR pardoned fewer people than any president in a long time. Clinton was pardoning people left and right. GHB pardoned 74. Reagan pardoned a large number. The presidents of the early 1900's pardoned literally hundreds of people.

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Just to be clear I never said the commutation was above the law, I said Bush holds homself above the law, based on things like his warrantless eavesdropping and issuing more signing statements than all previous presidents combined.

That being said, I realize many presidents have issue many pardons, Clinton only edged out Reagan by 3. The real question is how many presidents have pardoned people highly placed in their own administrations?

[TXboomerang]

Originally Posted by burdell

The real question is how many presidents have pardoned people highly placed in their own administrations?

To me, that matters zero. I don't care who it is or where they are at. If they are getting a free pass after a court convicted and sentenced/fined/etc. them just because they are buddies with the president or buddies with somebody that is buddies with the president, that is BS the way I see it. To seperate them out is simply ignoring the fact that if a person is guilty, they do not deserve a pardon, period. That's why Libby hasn't pissed me off any more than anyone else that has been pardoned. BTW, I wasn't picking on Clinton, Reagan was indeed just as bad on the number of people pardoned.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

I do kinda' recall from a fading memory ... since it got only a little bit of press ... that "bubba" was impeached for committing perjury, and subsequently lost his license to the bar.

Yup, impeached by the same people who insisted that Terri Schiavo was just resting. There never was a case for perjury. No prosecutor in his right mind would have brought the case. But a bunch of Mad Hatter House Managers parading around to the battle hymn of the new Republican Revolution would.

Clinton's disbarment, like all such, was meanwhile an administrative stricture within the legal profession based not on Clinton's conduct as either a citizen or a defendant in a civil suit, but on departures from a professional oath as an officer of the court always to act in the pursuit of truth. That oath of course stands in direct opposition to a civil defendant's right to present a competent defense.

The real outrage there of course was that we taxpayers spent an enormous amount of time and money in a partisan effort to find something somewhere with which to defame the President of the United States, and the most they could come up with out of all that sorry attempt was...well, actually, in all those years they never came up with anything beyond the saucy tidbit of oral sex between two consenting adults.

Originally Posted by sunsprit

What's worse here is that "bubba" was covering up actual crimes he'd committed...

Like murdering Vince Foster, ya think?

Originally Posted by sunsprit

...where Scooter's prosecutor knew full well before he dragged Scooter into court that Scooter had not been the "leaker".

Try speaking to perjury, lying to investigators, and obstruction of justice. Those are the charges that were brought. Those were the charges that Scooter was convicted of. The separate matter of the 'leaker' case has not been resolved yet.

[burdell]

Originally Posted by tnbound2day

To me, that matters zero. I don't care who it is or where they are at. If they are getting a free pass after a court convicted and sentenced/fined/etc. them just because they are buddies with the president or buddies with somebody that is buddies with the president, that is BS the way I see it. To seperate them out is simply ignoring the fact that if a person is guilty, they do not deserve a pardon, period. That's why Libby hasn't pissed me off any more than anyone else that has been pardoned. BTW, I wasn't picking on Clinton, Reagan was indeed just as bad on the number of people pardoned.

I'm not even that troubled by the concept of presidential pardons. While I know there will inevitably be some degree of abuse I think it serves a purpose to allow pardons if the circumstances warrant, illness, quetionable evidence, etc. What bothers me is the involvement of a member of the administration granting the pardon or commutation, in theory it gives them carte blanche to do what ever they want knowing any penalties can be easily avoided.

[crashcop]

[quote=sunsprit;1027559]

I do kinda' recall from a fading memory ... since it got only a little bit of press ... that "bubba" was impeached for committing perjury, and subsequently lost his license to the bar.

IMO, that's a comparable trial process as to what Scooter went through in the Federal courtroom ... if not more stringent.

You confuse the process. In re, President Clinton, the House of Representatives voted for the Articles of Impeachment ( formal charges) , that was, subsquently, delivered to the Senate.

Article I § 2 of the United States Constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power to impeach (make formal charges against) and Article I § 3 gives the Senate the sole power to try impeachments.

The trial in the Senate is handled by "Managers" from the House of Representative, with the assistance of attorneys employed for the prosecution of the impeachment case. The Senate sits as a jury. (In the past the Senate has heard judicial impeachments by appointing a subcommittee especially for that purpose, which then reports its findings to the Senate as a whole. See Rules of the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials, Rule XI.) The Senate would then debate the matter, and vote, each individual Senator voting whether to convict the President and remove him from office, or against conviction. If more then two-thirds of the Senators present vote to convict, the President would be removed from office. Thus a Senator who abstained from voting but was present would in effect be voting against conviction. (Article I §3). Presidential Impeachment: The Legal Standard and Procedure

By vote President Clinton was not convicted, therefore, impeachment failed.
He lost his law license through an administrative proceedure for being deceptive while under oath, he was considered an officer of the court.

As far as his sexual conduct goes, it became an issue when he did it with a Federal government intern, outside of the Whte House private residence, in a public office, not unlike the the Senators and Reps over the years.

[crashcop]

Originally Posted by burdell

Clinton pardoned former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros (lied to FBI investigators about payments to his mistress) and ex-CIA chief John Deutch ("forced out at the CIA when he contradicted White House claims that U.S. missile strikes on Iraq were effective").

[crashcop]

[quote=burdell;1027027]

the sentencing guidelines of his own Justice Department?

Sentencing guidelines come from Federal Statute, and the US Courts, not the Justice Department.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by crashcop

Clinton pardoned former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros (lied to FBI investigators about payments to his mistress) and ex-CIA chief John Deutch ("forced out at the CIA when he contradicted White House claims that U.S. missile strikes on Iraq were effective").

Quite true, Cisneros lied to investigators, not about making hush money payments to a former mistress, but about how much those payments had been. The actual numbers would have suggested that the mistress was involved in a bank fraud scam (later prosecuted). Cisneros pled guilty and was sentenced accordingly. His pardon came after the fact.

The pardon of John Deutch had nothing to do with missile strikes or his opinion of them. His crime was placing classified files onto a non-secure laptop to take home and work on over the weekend. The CIA investigated the circumstances but declined to take any action, referring the matter to the Justice Department which also declined to take any action. No prosecution. No conviction. His pardon simply took a closed matter off the books.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by crashcop

Sentencing guidelines come from Federal Statute, and the US Courts, not the Justice Department.

If your implication is that the Justice Department is not the main player in defining, promulgating, and seeking to enforce federal sentencing guidelines, then that implication is entirely false. Justice is the primary author and interpreter of the guidelines and the primary enforcer of them through its oversight of the federal courts system.