E.J. Dionne Enraged

After six years of the George W. Bush presidency, the libs must be exhausted.

They've been in a state of rage for so long now.

It's amazing that they've managed to keep the angry fires burning for all this time.

Along with others, E.J. Dionne Jr. is having a hissy fit over Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence.

I harbored no personal desire to see I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby spend a long time in prison for his perjury and obstruction-of-justice convictions. People who know him tell me he is a thoughtful and interesting man, and I have no reason to doubt them.

Yet when I learned that President Bush had commuted Libby's 30-month sentence, I was enraged although not surprised. Rage should not be a standard response to political events (though avoiding it has gotten harder in recent years), so I had to ask if my anger was justified. Here's the case for getting mad and staying mad.

The core point is that "equal justice under law" either means something or it doesn't. In this case, all the facts we know tell us that Libby received far more than equal justice, as evidenced by the irregular way his commutation was handled.

...As Michael Abramowitz reported in Tuesday's Post: "For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department's pardon attorney." Again: This was a one-time-only ticket for one guy.

Bush purported to be seeking a "third way" (forgive me, Tony Blair) between an outright pardon and allowing the law to follow its course. "I respect the jury's verdict," the president said. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. . . . The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting."

But if Bush meant that, he'd declare that a full pardon for Libby is out of the question. The day after he commuted Libby's sentence, Bush explicitly refused to do so. Moving back to stonewalling, the president said, "As to the future, I rule nothing in or nothing out."

Notice the pattern: When the heat was on in the CIA leak case, Bush issued a strong pledge to fire anybody involved in leaking. He didn't. When Libby was indicted, Bush ducked comment until Libby was at prison's door. Now, by keeping Libby free, Bush can conveniently postpone a full pardon until after the 2008 election. In the meantime, Libby has no incentive to tell prosecutors anything new about what happened in this case. As liberal blogs have noted, since he was not pardoned outright, he can use the pending appeal of his conviction to avoid testifying before Congress.

It's an airtight coverup made possible by the administration's willingness to bend the law. We spent months talking about Clinton's pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich. This commutation is an even greater outrage because it involves the administration taking steps to slip accountability for its own actions. Are we just going to let this one go by?

The Bush critics never let up.

It's like a sickness with them. It's as if they're addicted. They have to maintain the level of hatred. They have to feed their years old habit.

The lib media simply will not let go of that tired old line that Bush promised to fire anyone involved in leaking.

Dionne, like so many other libs, claims he didn't.

To begin, there was nothing to leak. One can't blow a covert CIA agent's cover unless that agent is covert. That should have been enough to end the matter but it wasn't.

Furthermore, LIBBY DIDN'T LEAK VALERIE PLAME'S NAME. Richard Armitage was the original source.

That's not speculation. That's fact.

Mark Levin writes:

[P]rosecutors knew Armitage was the "source" almost immediately after beginning their investigation because Armitage confessed. Indeed, when he thought he may have done something wrong, he appears to have cried on many shoulders. Armitage told his boss, Colin Powell, that he was the source, as well as other State Department and Justice Department officials. He told the Special Counsel's people. And not one of them — Armitage, Powell, Patrick Fitzgerald, et al. — had the guts or integrity to tell the public that the original source was Armitage. Why were they protecting him from public scrutiny? By their silence, Armitage and Powell allowed two innocent men, Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, to be smeared as speculation about them being Novak's original source ran rampant. Liberal commentators and politicians had a blast. The truth be damned.

I also believe two things are very apparent. First, the media like Armitage and Powell. They've been great anti-Bush sources over the years. They run in the same social circles in Washington. So, many in the media protected Armitage and Powell. Not until later, when Bob Woodward had to come forward and admit that Armitage had also fingered Plame to him, did it become more difficult for the media to continue to cover-up for their favorite Bush administration officials.

Second, Fitzgerald's investigation is a sham. That's right, a sham. He knew several things early on: 1. Armitage was the original source; 2. disclosing Plame's identity was not a crime; and 3. the investigation was launched due to political pressure from Capitol Hill, especially Chuck Schumer (who was working with Joe Wilson, and who is also the head of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee). Rather than put an end to this, Fitzgerald appears to have enjoyed the spotlight and adulation from the president's opponents, pursuing "the case" as if he were chasing mobsters or terrorists.

Fitzgerald knew Armitage was the source, but he went forward. He embarked on a political witch hunt. He continued to investigate even though he knew that Armitage had confessed to authorities in October of 2003 that he was the original source for Robert Novak's column identifying Plame.

That's the reality that should pacify Dionne's anger at the Bush administration and Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby.

It doesn't.

Why?

Even when faced with the facts of the case, even when faced with the authority and powers of the president as spelled out in the Constitution, Dionne and his comrades insist that what Bush did was wrong.

Dionne even dares to say that Clinton's 11th hour pardons were legitimate, but Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence was an abuse of power.

His charge that the Bush administration is engaged in a pattern of bending the law is ridiculous.

In his column, Dionne claims to make the case for "getting mad and staying mad."

He doesn't.

There's nothing rational about it.

The only reason that Dionne has for "getting mad and staying mad" is the same rationale that the libs have drawn from since Bush assumed office.

It's the regurgitaion of the Dem's utterly lame Culture of Corruption strategy. It's so old.

It's positively crazy for libs to whine about Bush dismissing the law when they defend Clinton's behavior in office. When Bill was President of the United States he committed perjury; yet that doesn't get a rise out of Dionne.

Hours before he left office, Clinton pardoned 140 people.

These weren't principled decisions. They were favors for cronies and politically motivated moves.

The libs have spent so much time and effort being angry at Bush and finding new reasons to stay angry.

How can they keep the outrage alive?