Oh the humanity…that a member of this country’s GOP elite should actually have to suffer the indignities of paying a penalty for willfully lying before a federal grand jury and to be charged with and convicted of obstruction of justice. This must surely be some horrible mistake.
A large percentage of those who have a platform on the right are in a very public panic over what they perceive as the tragedy that has befallen the Libby family. The sentence handed down by judge Reggie B. Walton must assuredly be a grievous miscarriage of justice, as Scooter Libby has such unwavering support from some of the nation’s most prominent conservatives in government, the military, and the corporate world. Walton received more than one hundred fifty letters of support that attested to Libby’s character and high moral standards. The advisory board of his defense fund, as John Dean puts it, reads as a veritable “Who’s Who of the Right-Wing Establishment”. Scooter’s “friends include near-certain republican presidential candidate and current it-boy, although no one seems to know what "it" is, Fred Thompson.
Thompson heads up the “Free Scooter” committee, which includes William Bennett, Edwin Meese, and numerous other stalwarts of conservatism. These stellar keepers of the “Law and Order party” are very openly sitting on a board to raise funds to pay the legal expenses of a now convicted Libby, being led by a former actor on a TV show called “Law and Order.” So, it's Law and Order all around, except of course when its one of their own. With the spin machine in high gear, the objective is to paint Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor tasked by the Bush administration with getting to the bottom of the Plame leak, as a rabid, Bush-hating instrument of the Left.
But most importantly, to conflate the crimes for which Libby was convicted with whether or not Plame was covert, whether Wilson was sent by his wife to investigate Saddam Hussein’s capacity to obtain uranium from Niger, and to hammer home the narrative that Richard Armitage was the one who should have been on trial to begin with not the Beave, I mean Scooter. Conflating issues is a republican specialty as we know, Saddam and 9/11, terrorists and insurgents, etc. Poor ole Scooter just forgot that’s all. With all the intricate details of Cheney’s dark underworld to keep track of, how could he remember not to invent conversations with Tim Russert, and if he couldn’t remember not to do that, how could he possibly remember not to tell a grand jury about it?
Covering up for the big guy is an awesome responsibility, but surely Cheney must foster undying gratitude for Libby’s willingness to put his head in the “meat grinder” for his boss. Seemingly, not so much, as Cheney told Wolf Blitzer that he’d not spoken to his former Chief of Staff since he “resigned.” In the world of conservative politics, Scooter Libby is a martyr, a victim of an upside down system in which the man is inexplicably sticking it to the man. And what a man he is.
Mary Matalin, Libby’s deranged number one fan, or eh, thing, James Carville’s mate, recounts in her letter of support to judge Walton how not only her own offspring but children in general think Scooter just “hung the moon”. The contrived choice of this antiquated phrase that no one under one hundred would use was, I suppose, meant to convey purity and innocence, to hearken back to days gone by, simpler times when all she and Scooter and Dick had to think about was planning the occupation of Iraq.
If kids think he's it…you must acquit!
The prominent models of morality, success, conservative thought, and patriotism who attempted to communicate to judge Walton the very essence of the man; his honor, his character, and his family values were actually remiss, as they neglected to touch on Scooter’s creative side. That side that penned a “historical novel” entitled, “The Apprentice,” a book with the uplifting moral theme of the metamorphosis of a child into a child-prostitute, the one that’s chock full of sex, rape, and the ever-honorable bestiality.
Now that Libby is a convicted felon, calls for a presidential pardon are coming from many of those same prominent conservatives that wrote to Judge Walton on Libby’s behalf, and then some. The right is so captivated by the plight of their fallen hero that Wolf Blitzer saw fit to ask the GOP presidential candidates during the second CNN sponsored republican debate whether they would pardon Libby if they were the president. Aware they have nothing to lose by being honest, Tancredo and Brownback gave Blitzer a rousing affirmative, Gilmore and Paul said they would not, Giulani, a former federal prosecuter, characteristically hedged with a wait and see non-answer, and if Thompson had been there, we know what he would have said.
McCain, simply echoed his evil nemesis Giulani, but it was the Omen Part Two’s Damien-like Romney whose answer was the most troubling and one that should in part compel Democratic voters to in some way quell their differences and unite to insure that this man and no one like him can become the next president of the United States. His flip, eager answer openly called into question the integrity of a respected federal prosecutor and impugned the legitimacy of the very judicial system the GOP has all but tried to reinvent since Bush took office.
Romney stated that Patrick Fitzgerald, "clearly abused prosecutorial discretion" by going after Libby when Fitzgerald knew he was not the original source of the leak.” In other words, a potential leader of the free world believes it’s a political plus to firmly declare that it’s OK to lie to a federal grand jury if you’re well off, politically connected, and a faithful member of the republican party. You will never hear any of these candidates, Libby supporters, right-wing pundits, or conservative newspaper editors so publicly decry the flaws in the judicial system that consigns countless individuals known to be truly innocent after the fact, after they have been sent to prisons or even executed, because they lacked the best legal representation money could buy, they were minorities, or they were without influential friends eager to write letters of support to presiding judges.
To the behavior and conduct of these elite individuals, these self-defined "real" Americans who are waging the PR campaign designed to smooth the path for the pardon of Scooter Libby by George Bush, I say you should be ashamed of what you’re advocating. You so transparently convey your underlying goal to safeguard what people like you created, one of the worst and most ingrained aspects of our culture that what was built-in to the governing structure, which is the socioeconomic disparity that exists between the tiny percentage of individuals at the top of this country’s social registers and the rest of us.
That inequity that so often determines who gets the best jobs, who goes to prison, and who profits from it. I wonder what Libby’s second book will be about?
