This was the plan from the moment Libby commited his first criminal act.
There is to be no convictions under Cheney's and Bush's rule that will not be pardoned. I get it now.
Posted by Judith at July 3, 2007 01:41 PMDear Steve Soto, you're clearly a smart fellow but you along with all other Demos on the web need to start blaming the WHOTE REPUBLICAN PARTY for what is going on in Washington. Otherwise, the Demo who wins the presidency won't have any real coattails in the House and Senate and the Republicans will still be able to stymie every action the Demos attempt.
Posted by mary flagg at July 3, 2007 01:43 PMI've written and called everyone I can including the White House comment line at 4:00PM. We have to do more than scold them because they are lawless. Cheney wants to go to war with Iran and Bush says he might pardon Libby. He says that because he doesn't care about you or me he only cares about his base and his millionaire friends.
Posted by Connie L at July 3, 2007 01:58 PM"President Bush on Tuesday left open the possibility of an eventual pardon for former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. "As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out," the president said a day after commuting Libby's 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case."
Translation: Scooter, keep your mouth shut for the next 18 months and you'll get your pardon!
Hit the deck, another impeachment thread!
Having said that, the only responsible option for a republic faced with the incontestable facts of Cheney's crazed lawbreaking is impeachment.
House, Impeach Cheney and let the GOoPer clogged senate show the country whether they're for the republic or for Cheney.
The impeachment of Deadeye Dick is the logical, inevitable culmination of the Bush Era--what it has been building towards. We shouldn't shun it or over-analyze it. It's the fate that Bushco has forced upon the nation.
What would the Founders expect us to do in this situation? Cravenly and dumbly accept this intentional executive lawbreaking and constitutional depredation? Or impeach Cheney? I know my opinion.
Posted by euzoius at July 3, 2007 02:39 PMJudith: This was the plan from the moment Libby commited his first criminal act.
Uh, not really. They didn't expect to be caught that is why they were sloppy and forced to make up uncorrodinated stupid stories. Why Libby commited perjury.
"obstruct justice" come on Steve, obstruct justice, the president can't obstruct justice if he's exercising his constituted responsibilities. He's doing that here. And let's put another one down. This admin has not exercised this option very often if at all before. Duke C., Bob Ney where are they now. Not sleeping at there home right now. Come on folks, get that impeachment stuff going. Guarantee a Republican admin. in 2009. It's just about guaranteed now, just needs another little Democratic push.
Posted by peter at July 3, 2007 04:47 PMShorter peter:
Il Duce ha sempre ragione.
Posted by Davis X, Machina at July 3, 2007 05:01 PMThe current Junta is a near Soviet thing. Cheney is being set up to retire for 'family and Health reasons' much like Nik Kruschev, a far better man who held people together in the Seige of Stalingrad when he was the Mayor.
Can you imagine a frail, flabby slob like Cheney even surviving Stalingrad, much less steering the defence with Chuikov? Look it up.
Can you imagine Cheney starting out as a coal mine worker like Nik in pre world war one Russia? Naaah the exertion would lay him flat in a day.
Shit, a week of basic at Fort Dix woulda killed Cheney.
That's their problem. We got a physical wreck who needs a mash unit to go on a 50 mile drive with a prostate impaired gravel eunuch voice and a mind wreck who has the attention span of a vole, a penchent for sputtering autistic non sequitors and severe challenges of impaired executive function from Aspergers.
These are the freaks that the Oligarchy pawned off on idiot voters using a wizard of Oz like media machine and truckloads of money followed by skullduggery when the scam didn't pan out.They shoulda stuck with Dole or McOld.
But it all will pass. Despite Joe Shitbag Momentumans idiot windmill tilt at Iran that the Israelis don't even really want, it will fail.
Then we have Hugo Chavez doing an amazing job of coalition building to shut the US out of Iran, Russia and anywhere else AS poor Poppy got humiliated by his flailing kid at a useless 'Lobster summit', where Vlady played the tard for shits, belched up a few steamers and lobster claws and flew home to see what Chavez has going on.
Scoot is poot. Let little boots cover his bare ass til the cows come home. Basically folks, an array of world heavies from slimy Prince Bandar, (who just put his Aspen complex up for sale)to Chavez, Putin, god knows who in the EU and others have had enough.
If the amurrikan sock puppet congress is too lame to rein this pair of defectives in, the rest of the planet is now psyched to do so. I told you to keep an eye to Gordon Brown.
You have all failed insofar as your writing and topic selection sugggests, to soar over the planet with all the stuff at your fingertips.
I understand. A blinkered scope has you obsessing over witless bile from sub par imbeciles who write and spew stuff for oligarch bullhorns that are all GOING OUT OF BUSINESS in a slow bleed.
Amurrikka is blithely committing suicide before a puzzled world like, as one person noted 'a kid in a car who is too excited about the blow job to notice he's driving over a cliff'.
I love the whole amazing planet and fate put me here. America does not exist in a vaccuum. Every dim autistic W move is soon met with smarter countermoves all over the place.
That's the Iraq war as a microcosm. Every idiot thing our fat and clumsy millitary does is instantly met with a deft and deadly adaptation in a hornets nest of furious sorts who know their ground cold.
It is like a universal thing like the movement of waves or storm fronts from microcosm to macrocosm. "The American Century" was sooo yesterday.
Please school yourselves. Embrace the planet and all its amazing cultures and peoples, many far wiser than we'll ever be and understand that they want to save us from our idiot selves cause we might have once meant something to them and THEY, not the congress sock puppets will save our butts from this scary disgraceful mess.
And finally, do not make the mistake of viewing the ruling class as some monolith. Many of the very pigs who foisted these wrecks off on us are now looking at the evaporation of TRILLIONS of their precious paper dollars by October and they will start quarrelling and eating each other in demented efforts to stave off the disaster that awaits them.
The hand of the Law is coming down and I do not mean ineptly enforced Ammerikkkan law but natural law as known to Newton, Darwin and Einstein.
Posted by Chris Rich at July 3, 2007 05:20 PMPeter
You are correct but this is fun to watch. Please do not discourage them from getting really, shall I say "goofey"?
I believe Scooter should have been pardoned immediately, but what the hell, we can wait.
We have, potentially, a summer and fall that I am afraid will make all other issues related to this look a little pale. I dearly hope not.
There is a side of that potential that you will not want to be on, and these folks (and a lot of others) are on it.
But then again, what do I know?
Posted by jj at July 3, 2007 05:26 PMI would imagine about now that many in this Country would go along with impeachment hearings and a trial.
Posted by Judith at July 3, 2007 06:19 PMGawd the trolls just get more pitiful with each passing thread. Peter and jj probably just graduated from Dogshit U in Buttfuck Backwater USA. There is something painfully 20 something about them.
This is the best the vile side can cough up? They come off as a whispered kid boy circle jerk at Dingbat Academy bloated with hormonal urges but terrified of 'the gurls'.
I see it as another doom indice. The more agile kool aid defenders of the indefensable bailed so like the dying days of the third reich, we get the pimpley Hitler Youth and the "Stomach Battalions", damaged ulcer cases tossed into the meatgrinder as a last ditch.
Clamor for the huge cumbersome impeachment process. It's what you know and reflexive. I see a far more entertaining doom hitting these filthy clowns.
I got me popcorn ready. Wait til you see what October brings and I hope everyone will be ready to weather a storm we haven't seen since 1929? Will you be able to get by? Take stock now.
Stop wasting your time on Dead Men Walking and typically shallow personality parades. This is deeper than a progressive retrofit of People Magazine tomfoolery.
You are innocent creatures of your Kulture and there has never been a more urgent time to transcend the acculturation.
Posted by Chris Rich at July 3, 2007 07:05 PMOn Monday, we learned about two things involving the figure 2 1/2:
1) We learned that Scooter Libby, having had his sentence commuted by President Bush, was not going to have to spend 2 1/2 years in a federal peniteniary. However, until we finally learn the full extent of damage done to our national security by the outing of a covert CIA agent, odds are that 2 1/2 years was far too little. For instance, where's the CIA's after-incident damage assesment report? How many other covert CIA operatives were exposed after Valerie Plame's CIA identity was revealed, along with her connection to the CIA front company, Brewster Jennings? How many of these other covert CIA agents were killed, if at the time Plame's name was disclosed, they were overseas on a sensitive mission? How many of their contacts overseas were arrested and executed? Oh, right, the traitors in the Bush administration have sat on this report, and gotten one of their crony pals, Scooter Libby, to take the fall for them...which wasn't much of a fall since Bush just commuted Libby's jail sentence.
2) Per a USA Today front page article, we learned that U.S. Marines in Anbar Province in Iraq had made an URGENT REQUEST 2 1/2 years ago (February 2005) for better-armored, better-designed vehicles (1,169 of them, called MRAPs) that offer better protection from roadside bombs. Donald Rumsfeld blew off this URGENT REQUEST. Just the other day, though, his replacement as Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he not only was finally getting around to placing an order for these vehicles for our troops in harm's way, but he was ordering a total of 17,770. Shockingly, it is estimated that 742 of our troops in Iraq died in the 2 1/2 year period that this URGENT REQUEST requisition was ignored by Republicans in the Pentagon. Moreover, no estimate is made of how many of our soldiers in Iraq were severely injured by roadside bombs due to this lax Republican response to an URGENT REQUEST from 2 1/2 years ago. A thousand? Five thousand? Over ten thousand?
The blood of so many Americans is on the hands of the most corrupt and evil administration in American history. Our troops in Iraq. Our CIA agents. The victims on 9/11. The victims of Hurricane Katrina. So much blood. Bright red, red-state Republican generated blood.
Impeach Bush and Cheney before they get even more Americans killed!!!
Posted by The Oracle at July 4, 2007 12:12 AMI know one thing for sure, we need more intelligent trolls (or is that a oxymoron) who can actually debate issues. The talking points, dealt out each morning to the Stepford Trolls, are certainly not original or interesting.
Posted by Judith at July 4, 2007 04:59 AMThanks Chris for all those years back. How flatering it is to be called a twentysomething again.
Posted by peter at July 4, 2007 04:41 PMFred Fielding (who's the one who clearly gave Dimwit the minimal "legal" advice that led to this commutation v. pardon clusterfuck) learned a lot when he was Nixon's lawyer, but obviously not enough to prevent Dimwit from fucking up once again.
Posted by Basharov at July 4, 2007 08:53 PM