Via Atrios, Dick Cheney’s former top aide can look forward to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, followed by two years’ probation.
Patrick Fitzgerald considered the Cheney-led effort to spread around Plame’s name to be a crime but he lacked the evidence to convict because of false and contradictory statements by the key witness, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The graveness of Judge Walton’s sentence reflects how seriously Walton takes the potential crime that Libby helped to cover up.
Zombie Santa Claus
Set the White House flag at half mast.
Zombie Santa Claus
If it hasn’t been set at half-mast already, that is.
ATS
The flag marks a sunken hulk, like the USS Arizona. What bunch of bozos.
Rome Again
I wonder if Scooter will sit in prison gladly and be thankful that he saved the people he was covering for?
Martha Stewart
Dear Scooter:
Here’s how to deal with it: suck it up, sack up, and shut up.
I’ll send you some cookies.
ThymeZone
Except that in this case, the crew sank their own ship.
Under the direction of idiot officers.
But that’s a great analogy.
The Other Steve
$20 says he’s free on January 20, 2009
Zombie Santa Claus
Patrick Fitzgerald is like the treacherous Imperial Japanese Fleet! Why do leftists hate America?
I wonder if Bush will pardon him straight away, or wait until the last day of his Presidency?
Zombie Santa Claus
Damn, TZ and TOS beat me to it!
uh_clem
It’s actually two years of “supervised release” not probation. There’s a legal difference between the two terms, not that there’s much practical difference.
Anyway, odds are that we won’t get that far along – January 2009 is only 20 months away and we all know what’s likely to happen then.
Next step is to try to stay out while the appeals work their slow way through the courts – if Libby’s team can swing that, he doesn’t spend even a night in jail.
Andrei
Too bad Rick, Stormy70 and Darrell don’t read this blog anymore. It would have felt somewhat satisfactory at least to publicly say we told you so.
Davebo
30 months?
Nothing I tell ya.
Valerie and Joe will get at least 30 years.
Tom McGuire told me so.
Perry Como
Judge Walton is has a bad case of BDS. Libby didn’t do anything wrong. Ask Tom Maguire.
Rome Again
Great Firesign Theatre moniker, I love it. :)
uh_clem
Tom McGuire told me so.
Thanks for the reminder. It’s time to pay his site a visit so I can be reminded that Libby needs to remain free so that he can help find the “real perjurers.”
Perry Como
Ya know, I wrote that comment without even checking his site. I decided to look at it in case the snark was unwarranted (bwahahaha), and what was there? Sandy Burglar!
Someone needs to dub over the South Park episode “Simpsons Already Did It” with “Clinton Already Did It.” I swear some of these idiots are beyond parody.
Tsulagi
So how long before the Hannitys, the Malkins, the Assrockets, etc. bleat in unison about the injustice? The injustice that none other than their keen minds fathomed. The central “fact” that everyone missed including Libby’s defense team and the judge. The one that should have stopped this travesty before it even started…SHE WASN’T COVERT.
Known truth. As plain as the universe is 6,000 years old.
Barry
Rome Again Says:
“I wonder if Scooter will sit in prison gladly and be thankful that he saved the people he was covering for?”
If the administration is smart, they’ll make sure that he’s, uh, ‘well taken care of’.
The Other Steve Says:
“$20 says he’s free on January 20, 2009”
No way am I taking that bet. I figure that the only question is how long *before* then is he pardoned.
tBone
Well said. Anyone who actually believes that hokum about Plame being “covert” probably also thinks the Earth is round.
Pb
Speaking of Clinton…
That reason being… because Clinton had already gotten impeached, after Ken Starr had wasted tens of millions of dollars doggedly pursuing every non-story along the way, hence, mission accomplished?
Teak111
Probably wont serve time, but does a pardon remove the stain of being a convicted felone?
Rome Again
Well said. Anyone who actually believes that hokum about Plame being “covert” probably also thinks the Earth
is round.has four corners.Fixed.
Vladi G
Yeah, that liberal DOJ really let him get away with it.
Rusty Shackleford
If Libby spends 18 months in prison before Bush pardons him I’ll laugh my ass off. Bush should pardon Libby now, if he’s going to pardon him, otherwise what’s the point? Accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt and I’m sure Libby will get some months knocked off for good behavior so why admit you’re guilty if you’ve served well over half your sentence and release is just a few months away?
Rudi
Maybe Scooter will share a cell with P@ris and a bear. The adult industry will love GoldiHilton, Scooter and the Three Bears!!
Perry Como
Not only does it remove the stain, it make you qualified to run a government department tasked with spying on Americans! (John Poindexter)
LITBMueller
What pisses me off most was that Bush’s power to pardon gave Libby the ability to tell Fitz to go fuck himself if Fitz ever suggested a plea bargain.
“What?!??! You want me to rat out Dick and Karl? Fuck you, Fitz! I’ve got a get outta jail free card! And you know what? I won’t even have to pay for my lawyers out of my own pocket! Those fat cat Republican suckers will foot my bill!!! Hahahaha!”
DougJ
A blast from the past:
Kirk Spencer
One thought keeps returning to my mind. The IIPA – and a number of crimes associated with it (espionage act for example) – charges can still be prosecuted after January 20, 2009. Not to say the new administration won’t just let the dogs lie ‘for the peace of the nation’, but then again the option is there for them to open all those files that are still closed.
Mr Furious
At the rate he’s going, Bush won’t even bother to wait until the end of his term to pardon him.
Just to be a dick he might just as well pardon him next month and recess appoint him to something…
Dreggas
O/T but
Anyone covering the Schlozman testimony? TPM is but their updates are pretty sparse. Sounds like it is a boxing match from what they’ve said so far.
ATS
And it is fun to think that Libby will bounce right back into the GOP inner circle oneday, as did convicted felons Eliot Abrams and John Poindexter.
Dave
From RedState:
title:
“Who will pardon Scooter Libby? (GWB won’t. FDT would.)
(Will anyone indict Fitz?)”
Key graph:
“It looks like, should the appeal process not go well for him, Libby might have to wait a few years before this joke of a prosecution and wholly partisan miscarriage of justice is rectified. But it will happen, unless perhaps Hillary figures out some secret incantation enabling her to interfere.”
Sinister eyebrow
Why wait 18 months to pardon him? What would Bush have to worry about, slipping in the polls?
The Other Steve
Did anybody catch the Schlozman testimony?
I think he played the mayor in the Wizard of Oz.
Jake
Has there been any bleating about Activist Judges? I haven’t heard that in a while and I sort of miss it. Especially when the term is applied to Bush appointees.
Jake
Has there been any bleating about Activist Judges? I haven’t heard that in a while and I sort of miss it. Especially when the term is applied to Bush appointees.
Oh wait, I’m forgetting that Bush isn’t really a conservative, he’s some sort of patchooli-daubed Birkenstock cuddler in corporate drag. Never mind.
ThymeZone
Is anybody watching this Republican debate?
It’s a horror show of delusion and manipulation.
Honestly, who are these fucking people? I share a country with them? They’re crazy.
I just heard why we should be afraid of the recent attempt to put together an attack on Fort Dix.
Pizza delivery guys are going to attack a US Army base filled with armed soldiers. “We are at war,” says the insane Rudy Giuliani.
Watch this and see for yourself, these guys are nuts.
Chuck Butcher
Does anybody think Bush can slip farther? The dead-enders aren’t going to bail. hell pardon him now. I want to watch the R Primary Candidates and that one.
Jake
I know it’s never going to happen but I would love for a debate moderator to ask the Go Gitmo squad about terrorist attacks against abortion clinics. Maybe suggest the creeps who leave nail bombs are funded by radical Islamists.
Andrew
Look it, we didn’t do a good enough job destroying the pizza parlors of the Middle East, and now we see the dangerous consequences of letting Adbuls and Hamids the world over deliver pizza, possibly with double toppings, to innocent, defenseless, hungry Americans.
Andrew
How fucking sad is McCain’s descent into religious pandering to Jesus Brownback Huckabee?
ThymeZone
Sad, I suppose, to people outside of AZ who aren’t used to this guy. He is the biggest whore and weenie in politics today. Bar none. Always has been. He’d suck your dick on tv if he thought it would win him the White House.
Andrew
Jesus they all ran scared of the fags wearing camo.
And damn Tommy Thompson is one goofy looking dude.
Rusty Shackleford
Oh snap! Romney got punked!
Andrew
Bilingual countries don’t work!
Fuck you Switzerland!!!
Wait, maybe trilingual countries are okay.
Andrew
McCain owned the shit out of the immigrant haters.
Andrew
I’m talking to myself here.
I’m going to go drink now. I mean drink more.
ThymeZone
So they say. But here in Phoenix it’s been a bilingual town for — forever, and we managed to grow from 50k to a metro area of just short of 4 million since WWII, with a healthy economy and lots of jobs, being bilingual and being right in the mainstream of the mainstream of immigration, both legal and illegal.
So where is the “don’t work” part? I am not seeing it.
About a third of my neighbors within a half mile are Hispanic. Where’s the problem?
rachel
And Switzerland is quadri-lingual, so they’d be even more OK than that.
jake
Just drinks? I’d have to gobble a mound of Valium after prolonged exposure to Republican Pander Bears.
Except three of them are European.
I know you’re snarking but I think it’s interesting that none of the chest beaters want to mention that part of the equation. “Don’t panic! Terrists are all distinctly brown, talk funny and otherwise easy to tell apart from normal people!”
Heh.
On a side note, WTF is up with Mr. Fort Dix Six Tipster Dude? On the one hand he is very easy on the eyes. On the other, while I know blame for the fashion photo style shots lies with the photographer, for some reason I want to punch him on the nose.
Andrew
Rhaeto-Romansch is gay and would be kicked out of our military.
semper fubar
Why would Bush wait until Jan 09 to pardon Libby, when he cold give our whole justice system the big middle finger and do it now. Surely none of the 28-percenters will have a problem with that (apparently all of them have already written letters of support for Libby), and everyone else already hates him. Why wait?
Or, even better, maybe Cheney will arrogate that power to the Vice Presidency and just do it himself.
I predict a pardon within a month, either way.
Tim F.
When the water crunch hits you and your genius civic planners will grow from a metro area back to 50k in a hurry.
ConservativelyLiberal
Fixed. Somewhat.
ThymeZone
I seriously doubt that this will happen. I have followed the water saga here for fifty years, and it’s a long and fascinating story, but the short version is that with proper management and appropriate use of technology, water will not be a problem here. (Of course, moving AZ away from Red State status, as is now happening, is also key, since everybody knows that Republicans can’t govern anything. Please Google “Fife Symington” and “Even Meacham.”
To really understand this, you have to look at the history of the region for the last 1000 years. Think of Pima Cotton. Pima Cotton is named for the Pima Indians who grew their superior cotton here in this valley long before white people ever set foot in the region.
Next to rice, cotton is about the most water-intensive crop there is. It takes a LOT of water to grow cotton. This valley sits at the confluence of two huge watersheds. Three if you count the Colorado River.
Most of the houses out here are built on what used to be cotton fields. That gives you an idea of the baseline availability of water out here. This is the Sonoran desert, a desert characterized by being relatively wet and with a rich variety of plant and animal life. This ain’t the Mohave. Out desert is pretty.
Tucson will be in trouble long before Phoenix ever is.
So I’m not really worried about it.
BTW, this is not to be considered a Chamber of Commerce invitation to move here. Stay away, the place is way too crowded already.
ThymeZone
And of course, a nod back to my original point, which was that 3/4 of a century of the immigration policies that created the supposed “mess” we have now, has given us growth and prosperity out here in bilingual Phoenix, so I am looking for the rationale for the current “crisis” mongering we are hearing from the right these days.
You don’t suppose that “immigration” is the new “gay marriage” do you?
Tim F.
1950s: Fear of a red planet.
1960s-1970s: Fear of a black planet.
1980s: Fear of a gay planet.
1990s: Fear of the Clenis.
2000s: Fear of a brown planet.
In other words, yep.
Andrew
Luckily, red, black, gay, and Clenis fear are all still very much in style.
Rome Again
Brown: it’s the new Red.