Bush's judicial ad Lib(by)
to intervene to keep Scooter Libby, a former White House aide, out of prison throws light on another constitutional proposal in Gordon Brown's today: the need to politically decontaminate the judicial process. The Prime Minister said:
The role of Attorney General which combines legal and ministerial functions needs to change. And while we consult on reform, the Attorney General has decided, except if the law or national security requires it, not to make key prosecution decisions in individual criminal cases.
This significant change may still return to haunt Gordon Brown's predecessor.
Comments
Cue Predictable Bush Haters!
(Oh go on, you know you were going to.)
I don't know why one would need to be a Bush hater to see a moral problem in the behaviour of the US president here. This is an attempt - i think - by the president to protest his vice president rather than protect Libby. It's a disgrace. That doesn't make me anti-american or anti-bush. In fact, I am very pro-american and believe the removal of saddam hussein was justified. This is a different matter entirely. It's about a nation's justice system and the need to remove political interference from that system. Other criminals don't get this kind of intervention from the president. Only those who are close to him and who could harm him ultimately. That's simply unjust.
The prosecutor knew that an assistant secretary of state had accidently released the information about Plame.
The gentleman (an extremely honorable one I might add) openly confessed to what he had done and was told to remain silent by the prosecutor.
At that point all further investigation of the matter should have been dropped and Libby should have never been interviewed.
Yet, a witch hunt (or should I say a wizard hunt?) ensued to see who could be entrapped.
Bush has not gone against the system of justice, he has simply said that years of imprisonment would not be appropriate - the guilty verdict has been left in place as has the quarter of a million dollars fine.
So rant on about Bush!
John and I know you want to ;-)
Regards,
Michael
This is not a debate about Bush, really. It's a debate about jurisprudence. The separation of powers doctrine is extremely important and is clearly violated when the executive has the freedom to overturn a judicial decision. I am not anti-American, I am calling for this basic American legal principle to be upheld.
i agree david. other US presidents have intervened in this way and of course they grant pardons as well. The US needs to ask whether this is an appropriate freedom to grant their president. No such freedom exists in the UK for the government.
Can't we all agree that criminal justice is the realm of judges, not presidents? Or home secretaries for that matter
I've just watched Ambassador Joe Wilson, the husband of the woman at the centre of this exposure case, saying on TV that Pres. Bush had "shortcutted the judicial system."
Libby committed perjury, obstruction of justice. He lied to judges and grand juries. The sentence, according to the special prosecutor, was entirely within the guidelines for the crime Libby was convicted for.
US Democrats and some republicans are angry about this commutation.
Some say that Libby was the fall guy and it's not fair for him to take the rap for this. Well, he committed the crime, so he should pay the price. If other put him up to it, they should be pursued and prosecuted.
This is not about anti-Americanism, Im sorry some have made this accusation. This debate is tearing the American political-judicial community apart. It's indefensible.
I believe it is now time to make changes to the US constitution limiting the power of the president when it comes to pardons and commutations.
As I recall, the same Democrats who are so self rightiously outraged at this reduction of Libby's sentence were just last week eager to not only give 12 million people who broke the law by entering the US illegally complete amnesty but to give them also a direct assured path to citizenship. Do you suppose it's because they figure that when these illegal aliens eventually have the right to vote, they will all vote for Democrats? Nah, would they do a thing like that? Of course there is no chance, and I'd bet on it, that Libby will ever vote for a Democrat. I don't know who I detest more, Democrats or Republicans. I think it took me longer to learn to hate Democrats, with the Republicans it came naturally. I never trust anyone with a cause no matter what it is. They always want something from me and there is always an angle to it.
I remember and some of the liberal media have dared to remind the public that on President Clinton's last day in office, he pardoned hundreds of criminals. I don't take any of this seriously, nobody should. As crime goes, Libby's was small time. Now Fat Teddy from the People's Republic of Massachusetts is a different story. In any other circumstance than having a multi millionaire father who made his fortune bringing whiskey illegally into the US during Prohibition, he'd have gone to jail for drunk driving manslaughter having killed Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick in 1969 for sure. Instead he's been in the United States Senate at taxpayer expense. Don't tell me about getting away with breaking the law.
It seems there are a lot of people suggesting America should tinker with its constitution because they don't like the outcome of this event. Forget it, that's not anywhere near the political radar screen. We don't fool around with this unless something really serious comes up. One mistake can be a disaster. The insane amendment prohibiting alcohol was a blunder for which the US continues to pay a heavy price, it was the means by which the Sicilian Mafia, La Cosa Nostra became established in the US. No, there is no taste for an amendment in the US body politic. Even the Equal Rights Amendment for women went down in flames, this idea has no chance at all.
Re 8
Mark - I am in N. Ireland at the moment and from what I gather the new PM is making noise about some form of 'constitutional change'. I hope that those who have such strong views about 'needed' changes to the U.S. Constitution will be highly active in the political process of making their own document perfect.
Regards,
Michael
Michael N. Hull #9
The time, effort, and support it takes to ammend the Constitution of the United States has been made deliberately a very long and arduous task. The founders of the American government did not want to allow their work to be undone by frivolous political whims of the moment. No noisy activist group is going to make that happen, it takes far more than a mere momentary majority and is not done by a plebecite. It just isn't going to happen. The ingenuity and streamlined nature of this document is among its many marvels. The right of the President to commute sentences and grant pardons is not going away. Governors of all the states (I think) have the same power. This is one process in the system of checks and balances which allows one branch of government to overrule the actions of another. You might reflect on the fact that even within a single branch, the judiciary for example, exceptions do happen such as jury nullification of a judges instructions ruling against his diretives by ignoring them or a judge throwing out a verdict after a jury has reached it. This happend in the case of the English girl who was a nanny in the au pair program and shook her adopted family's baby to death in Massachusetts some years ago. She was lucky. Had the judge not thrown out the jury's guilty verdict, she would have spent many years in prison. As it was, she was returned to Britain.
This is not about Bush or the USA. It is about the corrupt Republican/Democratic Elite that goverm the USA and have one set of justice for their people and another for the rest. They should leave and give way to a Multiracial Multiethnic Libertarian Green Government.