[Penguin]

Olbermann's response to the Scooter commutation. It's a 10-minute clip, and it gets really good around the 5 minute mark. I recommend watching the entire clip:

YouTube - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

[Ninong]

Statement of Amb. Joseph C. Wilson, IV, before the House Judiciary Committee

July 11, 2007

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking member, members of the Committee,

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you at this hearing on the possible abuse of Presidential authority in the commutation of I. Lewis Libby, convicted on four counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice. I am not a lawyer, but I have understandably followed this case closely. This matter, after all, involves the betrayal of our national security, specifically the leaking of the identity of a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, my wife, Valerie Wilson, as a vicious means of political retribution.

After it became apparent in Spring of 2003 that one of the key justifications for war in the President's State of the Union address was not supported by the facts, I felt an obligation and a sense of responsibility to the American people and to our men and women in uniform to share my first-hand knowledge about the unsubstantiated allegations of uranium yellowcake sales from Niger to Iraq. Accordingly, In a New York Times article on July 6, 2003, I disclosed the deliberate deceptions surrounding the justification for the invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iraq. Eight days later Valerie's status as a CIA operative was made public in a newspaper column by Robert Novak. We now know from testimony and evidence presented in the United States vs. I. Lewis Libby that Novak's column was the end product of a process that was initiated by Vice President Cheney who directed his chief of staff, Scooter Libby to supervise it.

Never in my twenty-three years as a member of the diplomatic service of the United States did I ever imagine a betrayal of our national security at the highest levels.

Fifteen years ago this week, I was sworn in as George Herbert Walker Bush's Ambassador to two African countries - Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe. Seventeen years ago I served as his acting Ambassador to Iraq in the first Gulf War. I was the last American diplomat to confront Saddam Hussein about his invasion of Kuwait prior to Desert Storm. As acting Ambassador, my embassy was responsible for the safe evacuation of over 2,000 Americans from Kuwait and Iraq and the release of close to 150 Americans held hostage by Saddam and his thugs.

I was proud to serve my country mostly overseas, for twenty-three years, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and to promote and defend the values enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. I was honored to be then President Bush's envoy to Iraq and to have been part of the foreign policy team that managed the international crisis created by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Members of that foreign policy team remain among my closest colleagues and friends.

Given my service, it has been therefore disconcerting to see my family and my targeted in the crosshairs of a character assassination campaign launched by the Vice President and carried out by his chief of staff, and by the President's chief political aide, Karl Rove, among others.

Ultimately, this concerted effort to discredit me, ruining my wife's career along the way, has had a larger objective. This matter has always been about this administration's case for war and its willingness to mislead the American people to justify it. In order to protect its original falsehoods, the Vice President and his men decided to engage in a further betrayal of our national security. Scooter Libby sought to blame the Press, yet another deception. He was willing even to allow a journalist to spend eighty-five days in jail in a most cowardly act to avoid telling the truth.

President Bush promised that if any member of the White House staff were engaged in this matter, it would be a firing offense. However, the trial of Scooter Libby has proved conclusively that Karl Rove was involved, and although he escaped indictment, he still works at the White House. We also know as a result of evidence introduced in the trial that President Bush himself selectively declassified national security material to attempt to support the false rationale for war. The President's broken promise and his own involvement in this unseemly smear campaign reveal a chief executive willing to subvert the rule of law and system of justice that has undergirded this great republic of ours for over 200 years.

Make no mistake, the President's actions last week cast a pall of suspicion over his office and Vice President Cheney. Mr. Libby was convicted of, among other crimes, obstruction of justice - a legal term used to describe a cover-up. The Justice Department's Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said repeatedly that Mr. Libby's blatant lying had been the equivalent of "throwing sand in the eyes of the umpire", thereby ensuring that the umpire, the system of justice, cannot ascertain the whole truth. As a result, Fitzgerald has said, "a cloud remains over the Vice President." In commuting Mr. Libby's sentence, the President has removed any incentive for Mr. Libby to cooperate with the prosecutor. The obstruction of justice is ongoing and now the President has emerged as its greatest protector. The President's explanation for his commutation that Mr. Libby's sentence was excessive turns out to be yet another falsehood because the sentence was quite normal, as Special Counsel Fitzgerald noted. The President, at the very least, owes the American people a full and honest explanation of his actions and those of other senior administration officials in this matter, including, but not limited to the Vice President.

In closing, let me address the question of the underlying crime. Mr. Libby's attorneys and his apologists have tried to downplay his conviction on the grounds that nobody was actually indicted for the leak of Valerie's status as a covert CIA officer. Libby's propaganda is an effort to distract from his crime - his obstruction of justice, his cover up. Who is he protecting?

I would like the committee members and all Americans to think about this matter in this way: If senior American officials take time from their busy schedules to meet with a foreign military attaché for the purpose of compromising the identity of a CIA covert officer, what would we call that? Although that scenario is hypothetical, the end result is no different from what happened in this case - the betrayal of our national security.

I look forward to answering any and all legitimate questions.

[zhenya]

The bottom line is that nobody is willing to do anything about any of it and all this talks amounts to nothing. It may impact next year's elections but I'm not sure how. To say that it's disappointing is like saying nothing.
74% of people are disappointed and still there is nothing that could be done...
Is that right?
I just know one thing that if and when I was working, people that only had 26% job approval/ satisfaction usually got fired/removed from that job.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by zhenya

The bottom line is that nobody is willing to do anything about any of it and all this talks amounts to nothing. It may impact next year's elections but I'm not sure how. To say that it's disappointing is like saying nothing.
74% of people are disappointed and still there is nothing that could be done...
Is that right?

Under our form of government, the only remedy is the ballot box. The alternative would be impeachment. Impeachment, when it relates to either the president or the vice president, is more of a political action than a judicial one, in spite of what most people believe.

Our history tells us that you can't impeach a president unless you have overwhelming evidence of malfeasance and public support for impeachment. This was the case with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, which is why he resigned. He counted noses in the Senate and found that the vote for conviction would be 96-4. And two of those four votes were Southern Democrats.

In the case of Andrew Johnson, his impeachment was more political than anything else. It failed by one vote in the Senate.

Bill Clinton's impeachment was strictly political. If failed in the Senate. In fact, the Republicans couldn't even get a simply majority on any of the three counts, much less a two-thirds majority. Clinton's impeachment was NOT supported by public opinion. Clinton lied by omission in a deposition in a civil matter that was eventually thrown out on summary judgement. He was asked to name all of his extra-marital partners. That was an absurd invasion of privacy but the court allowed it. He named Gennifer Flowers but he failed to name Monica Lewinsky. The GOP already knew about Lewinsky. This was a perjury trap. They were paying the woman who brought the claim $15,000/month in "living expenses." Even after her attorneys negotiated a $750,000 settlement offer from Clinton's attorneys, the GOP attorneys who were handling her refused to permit her to settle. Eventually Clinton did pay her off but the case was thrown out.

In the meantime, Clinton made matters worse by denying that he had "sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." That was a big mistake. He based that on his understanding of the definition of "sexual relations," or so he said. He didn't consider felatio to be "sexual relations."

Clinton's impeachment is the textbook case of impeachment for the wrong reasons. He was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice but the public understood that he was lying about an extra-marital affair. Not many married men are willing to name all of their extra-marital partners in a deposition. And, BTW, Clinton was never convicted of perjury in any court. He did forfeit his Arkansas law licence for a few years but he was never convicted of anything in any court or in the Senate. He was impeached in the House but not convicted in the Senate. Clinton's perjury and obstruction involved a civil matter, a claim for damages for alleged sexual harassment. His perjury and obstruction did not involve national security matters, such as Libby's. Clinton didn't out a covert CIA agent for political reasons and then lie about it.

In my opinion, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales should be impeached. His impeachment would be easier than that of either Cheney or Bush. No doubt he would resign as soon as it became apparent that a bill of impeachment would be approved in the House. I don't think he would want to hang on for a trial in the Senate even if he figured he could avoid a two-thirds vote for conviction. That's just a hunch on my part.

I believe we should impeach both Cheney and Bush to avoid setting a terrible precedent for future presidencies. This isn't going to happen unless the public gets behind the idea. If polls start to show more than 60% of the American people in favor of impeachment, then things might happen. Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is "off the table." That's a political decision on her part. Having Bush and Cheney in office is probably better for the Democrats' chances in 2008. And impeachment could polarize the American public unless they are the ones demanding it.

Impeachment would start with John Conyers in the House and he is much more likely to favor it than Speaker Pelosi. He won't move unless she consents. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) from Marin county, just across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, said this week that she believes that "impeachment should be on the table." She didn't call for impeachment, she just said it should be on the table. She's to the left of Pelosi. Believe it or not, in San Francisco, Pelosi is considered a moderate. Boxer is considered a liberal and Diane Feinstein is considered a conservative. The current mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, was the most conservative candidate in the race. He has establishment ties to big money. Even though he's a Democrat, he wasn't the local Democratic party's choice to win the election. He ended up in a runoff with the Green party candidate. The Green party candidate drew votes away from the more liberal Democratic candidates, allowing Newsome to slip into the runoff. Since his election, his job approval numbers have been sky high. So high that virtually no one wants to run against him for reelection except the fringe candidates. And he recently weathered the revelation that he was having an affair with his campaign manager's wife. Gavin divorced his wife more than a year ago, so he's single. He's very close with the Getty family. Very close! His family has close ties to Gordon Getty going back decades.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, right... impeachment. I don't think it will happen. I think it should happen but I don't think it will happen.

In California, the voters recalled Democratic Governor Gray Davis just a year after his successful reelection. That was brought about by the energy crisis and rising electricity bills there that we now know was brought about by Enron's market manipulations. Darryl Issa, a wealthy GOP Congressman from Southern California, spent more than $2 million of his own money on the recall and once it looked like it might actually happen, Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race and wiped out the field. Arnold would never have been nominated by the California Republican Party because they're too conservative and he was never acceptable to them. Now Arnold has very high job approval ratings but that's because he has gone against the Bush Administration on a number of issues.

You can recall a governor but you can't recall a U.S. Senator or a President or Vice President. Any federal officer can be impeached, including federal judges. One federal judge was impeached, convicted and removed from the bench and then elected to the House of Representatives. He's still there! He's a Democrat!



P.S. -- Speaking of the energy crisis, crude oil topped $74/bbl today!

[Ninong]

Here's another example of just how imperial the Bush presidency has become:

The White House has refused to turn over internal documents relating to the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident, citing executive privilege. They don't want Congress to know what they were up to between the time of his death and the time it was announced five weeks later that his death was fratricide.

Based on what has already come out during the FIVE separate military investigations, it is apparent that military and government officials at the very highest levels were aware that it was friendly fire within a few days after the event. We even have one general telling his superior to make sure the president is aware of the facts so that he doesn't say the wrong thing inadvertently.

There is no doubt that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush all knew it was fratricide within a few days, the only question is whether they ordered the Army to keep that hidden. The Army tried to keep it hidden, even ordering one enlisted man to not disclose the truth to Pat's brother under penalty of courts martial. That was the close friend who was detailed to fly back with the casket and Pat's brother. He was given strict orders that he was NOT to tell Pat's brother or his family what had actually happened. It was only after word of mouth had spread the truth around for a good month that the Army brass caved in and admitted it was friendly fire. The final investigation charges a large number of officers, even generals, with deliberating issuing misleading statements. The officer who wrote the Bronze Star citation is charged with falsification and the general who approved it is charged with knowingly accepting a false statement.

Now the White House has decided that they're not going to let Congress know that President Bush was in on the coverup from the beginning.

[zhenya]

P.S. -- Speaking of the energy crisis, crude oil topped $74/bbl today!

Yeah I saw it... There is a ton of money to be made if you happened to own some oil stocks, the bad part is I do not own any...

I was just venting earlier because the little turd is getting completely out of hand and makes entire Democracy thing a mockery. I understand about the impeachment and too think it will never happen.
Now, if he got caught with his pants down in the oval office that would be another story...

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by zhenya

Now, if he got caught with his pants down in the oval office that would be another story...

Nah! Republicans are allowed to get away with that sort of thing. All they have to do is say they have "sinned" and that God has forgiven them. Then they can be born again. Again! Happens all the time.

God forgave him all the foolishness of his "youth," which didn't end until the tender age of 40 when Laura threatened to leave him if he didn't sober up. He had that little walk in the garden with Billy Graham and he was born again.

Look at Newt Gingrich, who was having an extra-marital affair at the exact same time he was impeaching Bill Clinton for fooling around in the Oval Office. And how about Bob Livingston, who was elected by the Republicans to replace Gingrich as Speaker but who tearfully resigned on the floor of the House in December 1998 after Larry Flynt outed his four mistresses! Four! Count 'em, FOUR!!! Livingston was my representative in Congress. I live in Louisiana's First Congressional District. Then David Vitter was my Congressman before he successfully ran for the Senate. Larry Flynt outed both Livingston and Vitter as GOP family values hypocrites. So far, the score is Larry Flynt 2, my Congressmen 0.

And Henry Hyde, who was on the impeachment panel, telling reporters that his own extra-marital affair with a staffer when he was 41 and she was 25 and both were married, was simply something that happened in his "youth." It also caused the woman's husband to divorce her.

And Rudy Giuliani who tried to kick the mother of his children out of the house (Gracie Mansion) so that he could move his mistress in. That was when he was mayor of New York City and still married to his second wife. She didn't want to give him a divorce. Rudy refused to allow her parents to stay overnight at Gracie Mansion when they came to town to visit. No wonder his kids can't stand his guts. Oh, and have I told you lately how Rudy announced his decision to divorce his second wife, Donna Hanover, on national television without informing her in advance. She and their children learned about it on the evening news with the rest of the country. And his then mistress and current third wife wasn't his only mistress while he was married to his second wife. The mistress just prior to the current future ex-Mrs. Giuliani was shuffled off to a $250,000/year government job once Rudy got tired of her and wanted to take up with Judy.

And Rudy's bestest buddy, Capo Bernie Kerik, had not one but two mistresses simultaneously (while married, of course) during the aftermath of 9/11. He was boinking them in a city owned condo. One of them discovered a note left in the condo by the other one and they contacted each other and compared notes. One of them was Judith Regan, the publisher of his book. She's the same publisher who put out O.J. Simpson's true confession book and got fired by Rupert Murdock. Now she's suing Murdock for $20 million and she says she has incriminating tapes that she says will embarrass very high-ranking News Corp (Fox News, etc.) honchos.

There was a little payback this November when the guy in New York and the guy in Pennsylvania lost their seats. The guy in Pennsylvania was the 60-something married guy who was accused of choking his 20-something mistress. Remember the picture I posted of the blonde who looked like she was dressed up as a wedding present? White dress with pink sash belt. That one! And the guy from New York was the dude who was photographed bombed with some preppy Republican frat boys and then it came out that his wife had filed a domestic abuse complaint against him with the local police because he was dragging her around the house by her hair. Both of those "family values" Republicans were defeated by commie pinko liberal heathen Democrats who hate our freedom and our troops and want al-Qaida to win and then come over here and rape our wives and our daughters and force us to have gay marriages and be sworn into office on the Koran.

[Ninong]

Patrick Fitzgerald wins another big case!

Conrad Black, aka Lord Black of Crossharbour, was convicted of obstruction of justice and three other charges and now faces 15-20 years behind bars, probably in the U.K. He's still out on $21 million bail. Considering his net worth, that's chump change.

Black used to be a Canadian but he renounced his Canadian citizenship so that he could accept a seat in the British House of Lords. I think that means that he now has a choice of doing time either here or in the Tower of London. If he were still a Canadian, he could opt to do his time in Canada.

I hope the Queen doesn't commute his sentence.



P.S. -- Maybe his lordship will renounce his British citizenship and reaffirm his Canadian citizenship in order to do his time in Canada? Nah, as a convicted felon, Canada would probably reject him. Besides, the Canadians are still pissed at him for dissing Canada by rejecting the country of his birth for a phony British title.

P.P.S. -- Here's an interesting question: I wonder if "Lord" Black's choice of country to do his time in will in any way affect his prospects for a full pardon from Bushie on Christmas Eve 2008, or perhaps the morning of January 20, 2009? I suspect that if Bush pardons him, which is a strong possibility, it doesn't make any difference whether he's in prison here or in some dungeon overlooking the Thames; it would still be a get-out-of-jail-free card.

[Ninong]

Judge Walton speaks out on Libby commutation.

In his first public remarks since President Bush commuted Scooter Libby's prison term, Judge Reggie Walton said he was "perplexed" by the president's belief that Walton's sentence was "excessive."

Walton, a Bush apointee to the D.C. district court, wrote yesterday in a court filing that while he doesn't question Bush's constitutional authority to commute prison sentences, Libby's 30-month sentence was "consistent with the bottom end of the applicable sentencing range as properly calculated under the United States Sentencing Guidelines." Underscoring his displeasure with the commutation -- which calls his professionalism into question -- Walton referenced Alberto Gonzales's June 1 statement that sentencing guidelines should be considered "a minimum for judges, not merely a suggestion." By ordering the commutation, Walton wrote, Bush "has effectively rewritten the statutory scheme" for sentencing "on an ad hoc basis." Perhaps appropriately for a Bush appointee, Walton is basically explaining that judicial restraint compelled him to follow the sentencing guidelines -- and that 30 months in jail is rather merciful, considering what the guidelines require.

Libby will have to report to the federal Probation Office with "all requisite haste." If he doesn't, he might actually spend a night in jail.

You can read Walton's statement here.