Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] News Alert: Bush Commutes Libby's Prison Sentence

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2007, Jonathan King wrote:

> Conveniently, commuting Libby's sentence puts him in a very interesting 
> position. In particular, he is free to refuse to respond to future 
> questions by prosecutors on Fifth amendment grounds, whereas if he were 
> pardoned, he would not have fifth amendment rights in this situation 
> because he would not be in danger of being prosecuted. The current 
> situation is completely apalling: we have no hope of obtaining the truth 
> in the matter, and yet we know there are guilty parties who could insure 
> that they could not be prosecuted beasue of the Pardoning Power of the 
> president.


What good is this "Pardoning Power" anyway?  Maybe we should do away with 
it.  It clearly means that the President's loyal helpers can break with 
impunity any law he wants them to break.  That's not good.  I didn't like 
Clinton pardoning Rich nor Ford pardoning Nixon (the idea that it was 
"healing" is a load of b.s.).  In fact, I can't name a single presidential 
pardon that seemed to be a good idea (I can't name very many though and 
I'm not saying they are all bad).

So why don't we get rid of the pardoning power and just obey the laws?!

When the Libby case was first prosecuted, we had a Republican Executive, 
Republican Senate, Republican House, so there was a Republican special 
prosecutor and a Republican judge.  According to Rick (I think it was 
Rick), we ended up with a "retarded" sentence for Libby -- what does that 
say about the Republican party?

Mike

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