Wasn't he a character on "The Muppet Show?"
Politics follow. Fair warning.
I've of course been following the trial and conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick "Shooter" Cheney.
(Sorry, couldn't resist. I know, it was too obvious.)
For those of you not following along, Scooter has been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for his actions during the investigation to find the leakers of the identity of Valerie Plame.
Was chatting about the conviction briefly with Pete yesterday. After I bemoaned the fact that we haven't actually managed to convict or even charge anyone for leaking the fricking information, Pete expressed the opinion that maybe now that can move forward. If Scooter is facing 20 years in prison and a fine of millions of dollars, which apparently he is, he'd have pretty strong motivation to turn on the people who did the actual leaking so as to save his own bacon. Perhaps motivation strong enough to overcome the whole White House inner-circle loyalty. 20 years in prison is a long time.
However. The defense team here wasted no time in proclaiming that they would a) ask for a new trial, and failing that b) appeal the verdict.
What I notice is that such proceedings could reasonably last for more than two years, until after the next election cycle. At which point no one would care.
This even aside from the fact that President Bush, whose primary characteristic seems to be loyalty to "his" people, could easily pardon Libby and skate for it in any case.
As a side note, Bush's post-Libby-conviction quote was that Scooter had done "amazing service for the American people" or some such. Hey, wait. I'm an American. What's Scooter done for me?
So, yeah. I'm going to go ahead and opine that in fact there is little or no pressure on Scooter to turn on the real leakers, and predict that sadly nothing substantive will come of this.
I've of course been following the trial and conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick "Shooter" Cheney.
(Sorry, couldn't resist. I know, it was too obvious.)
For those of you not following along, Scooter has been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for his actions during the investigation to find the leakers of the identity of Valerie Plame.
Was chatting about the conviction briefly with Pete yesterday. After I bemoaned the fact that we haven't actually managed to convict or even charge anyone for leaking the fricking information, Pete expressed the opinion that maybe now that can move forward. If Scooter is facing 20 years in prison and a fine of millions of dollars, which apparently he is, he'd have pretty strong motivation to turn on the people who did the actual leaking so as to save his own bacon. Perhaps motivation strong enough to overcome the whole White House inner-circle loyalty. 20 years in prison is a long time.
However. The defense team here wasted no time in proclaiming that they would a) ask for a new trial, and failing that b) appeal the verdict.
What I notice is that such proceedings could reasonably last for more than two years, until after the next election cycle. At which point no one would care.
This even aside from the fact that President Bush, whose primary characteristic seems to be loyalty to "his" people, could easily pardon Libby and skate for it in any case.
As a side note, Bush's post-Libby-conviction quote was that Scooter had done "amazing service for the American people" or some such. Hey, wait. I'm an American. What's Scooter done for me?
So, yeah. I'm going to go ahead and opine that in fact there is little or no pressure on Scooter to turn on the real leakers, and predict that sadly nothing substantive will come of this.
posted by Craig at 6:17 AM
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