where do we place our last minute bets?
What do we win?
Will the Scooter turn into a put-put? Drum-roll ...
Does it really matter? The charge is so peripheral to the actual scandal. Perhaps he's even innocent.
Perjury and coverups prevent prosecution of crimes, so they're not really peripheral. Perjury prosecutions can be an essential step toward getting past the defenses to the actual offender. If Libby goes down, Cheney is unprotected.
If anyone can get on Firedoglake, post info here.
5 is exactly right. Destroying evidence of a crime is not peripheral to the crime.
And if Scooter did commit perjury at the request of his boss then the smackdown would be a good - both in terms of effective and in terms of being lawful and right - way to assert the rule of law over an administration that has zero regard for the law when they find it inconvenient.
Maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.
The not guilty was on count 3 (one of the two charges of making a false statement.)
All except the lying about Matt Cooper's conversation; that's the one the jury had questions about.
Woohoo! Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
w00t!!1!
Now let's take bets on how long until the pardon.
13: Actually, if the perjury is in service of the Bush administration, it carries a maximum sentence of 685 days.
Well, that certainly cheered up my boring afternoon at work!
He just has to appeal until the pardon, alas.
I'm going to mindread and assume that Lovecraft is talking about a pardon to be issued just before Inauguration Day 2009. Why it wouldn't be issued earlier, I'm not sure.
685 days until Bush's term ends, and lots of pardons are given on the last few days a president is in office.
I wonder how the Supreme Court would rule? An overturned verdict would be better for them than a pardon.
How would you get it to them? I don't see a viable issue.
I'm sure they could come up with something.
26: Would the Supreme Court grant certiorari in a case like this? I don't see a constitutional issue here--it's pretty much a straightforward perjury and obstruction of justice case--and I can't see that they would really want to get involved in this mess.
Privilege of the Executive branch to do whateverthefuck it wants?
Regardless, I don't think the SC will really want to wade into this.
What Matt F said, except that I think that he overestimates the Supremes.
So Cheney's little Scooter goes into the repair shop. And Cheney's lines are clogged. What's next?
"Would the Supreme Court grant certiorari in a case like this?...and I can't see that they would really want to get involved in this mess."
Whoa, I just had the weirdest flashback to the end of 2000.
I was forced to watch Fox to get the news because that's the only stream I could get- I never watch Fox, only hear secondhand accounts, but the lack of any pretense of objectivity is shocking. (I'm sure that's old news to people who actually watch them.) Before the verdict they went on about how Fitz knew who the leaker was before charging Libby but did it anyway to justify all the time and money he spent; then after the verdict they contradicted that and said how Fitz could keep investigating, he's out of control, has no boss to reign him in, and has no limit to what he could spend. They were theorizing points to appeal, arguing that the jury was confused and obviously didn't understand the case- it was the worst "news" reporting I've ever seen, and I'm sure it's just their usual noontime reporters.
The Fox online report described him as "former White House aide". In fact, the words "Dick Cheney" don't appear anywhere.
Fitzgerald said in his presser that he "does not expect to file further charges". I suppose that he might be asking for somebody to give him some new information, first...
24: Why it wouldn't be issued earlier, I'm not sure.
Well, that's why I said 'maximum' sentence. It's traditional to pardon when exiting the White House so as not to have to justify the decision. While Bush on some level doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks about his decisions, he's also coward enough not to stick his neck out for Libby.
Emerson makes a good point in 21, though, that Scooter will probably be able to run the clock out till pardon day and never actually serve time.
I just had the weirdest flashback to the end of 2000.
I was thinking about that, but a Presidential election is a rather different situation (in terms of immediate importance) than this business with Libby.
Okay, I don't get it. Once he's sentenced, he pretty much starts serving time immediately, yes? If not, why not?
37. Matt, the 2000 election is the subject of a book I am currently writing. More about this later.
My guess is that he'll get ba pardon at the end of the admin, if he hasn't gotten the DC Circuit to overturn the conviction. I'm sure Wells has a collection of errors in his bag.
Once he's sentenced, he pretty much starts serving time immediately, yes?
It's possible to stay the verdict pending appeal, though I don't know if that's the case in this situation.
DailyKos posted this in the stream of liveblogging: No objection to continuing bail pending appeal. Does this mean until sentencing, or what?
No, it means until the appeals are finished. That comes after sentencing.
"No objection to continuing bail pending appeal"
"...the social movements of the 1960s and 70s. The sense that, ultimately, these movements failed and the Democratic Party came to disaster through its association with them is inescapable." That fucker Yglesias today
I still say Fitz is in the tank. Do y'all think this is some kind of big deal? Libby? Wars & war crimes, corruptions of a scale not seen since Grant, Katrina, lies lies and more lies on a daily basis, and the kids have a big party for setting up a pardon for a nobody.
All those crummy hippies got was a President & Vice-President, an Attorney General, Director of the FBI, Counsel to the President, major staffers etc etc.
The blog generation got an assistant to to the VP, and they ain't got that official fall-guy yet. They got nothing. The war continues and may escalate. NOLA still jas hald its schools closed. The great achievement of a Democratic Congress is bending over. Bush has not been touched, damaged, slowed down. How many supoenas been issued by Congress? Where are the investigations? Give you ten more years?
It is not just the total lack of achievement that makes me sick. It is the utter air of arrogant moral superiority associated with the impotence and miserably low expectations. Megolamaniac midgets.
But at least you aren't fucking hippies with puppets.
All those crummy hippies got was a President & Vice-President, an Attorney General, Director of the FBI, Counsel to the President, major staffers etc etc.
I never knew Judge Sirica was a hippie. Live and learn.
I'm just annoyed that we have serious grownups in politics called "Scooter." Really, investigations should have started just for that.
Long term, not much to add. It's not a bad start, but serious grownups in politics, even ones named "Scooter", don't get through a long career and suddenly forget how to keep their mouths shut.
I quite enjoy fucking hippies with puppets.
Bob generally tends to confuse and frighten me, but on this one I'm 100% with him. Scooter is a patsy. Time to see some action on the big-time criminals.
I'm 100% with him
You think Fitzgerald is in the tank, and you misread Yglesias to be endorsing, rather than describing, the relationship progressives have with the social movements of the 60s and 70s?
see some action on the big-time criminals
What would the action be, exactly? This sounds like Edith Heare territory.
Okay, the reading of Yglesias doesn't wash. So I guess I'm about 50% with him. But that being an 85% increase over usual levels, I got a little carried away.
What would the action be, exactly? I think, exactly, that there should be large numbers of people figuring out how to put George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in jail cells over any number of open, flagrant and publicly-documented violations of American and international law. Exactly how that happens I don't know. But if that's truly Edith Heare territory, y'all are truly screwed and the rest of us along with you.
I think you're all misreading bob in #46. He meant it to be a parody of the self-congratulatory moral smugness that became the sin qua non of that set of people and doomed their various reputations. Well done, bob.
Nice. SCMTim is the Todd Gitlin of unfogged.
54: But you'll always be our Hibiscus, Labs.
Just to stir the pot, people misunderstand why the Sixties turned out so badly. The main reason is that the Vietnam war was a Democratic war. In 1968 the Republicans were hoping for Johnson to fall, but with a few exceptions they were still supporting the war. (Additional point: in 1964 Johnson campaigned against Goldwater as a peace candidate).
In 1968 the Democratic loyalists supported continuing the war and did what they could to freeze out anti-war people, and after 1968 the idea of working within the system was implausible. From that point it was hopeless.
54:I agree with Labs. SCMT is the Gitlin
"and you misread Yglesias to be endorsing, rather than describing, the relationship progressives have with the social movements of the 60s and 70s?" SCMT
Whatever the fuck this means. Endorsing the relationship? What relationship? What is the relationship?
"The sense that, ultimately, these movements failed and the Democratic Party came to disaster through its association with them is inescapable"
This isn't hard. "The sense that these movements failed... is inescapable" is not a tricky sentence.
Civil rights, great soiety, womens rights, gay rights, peace movements
What would the action be, exactly?
We smoke the shit out of them.
Onion personal:
fairnymph1
More about who I'm looking for: "I want someone brutally honest. I can deal with anything if it's direct."
Brutally honest is me, babe. Be careful what you wish for.
Onion personal:
fairnymph1
More about who I'm looking for: "I want someone brutally honest. I can deal with anything if it's direct."
Brutally honest is me, babe. Be careful what you wish for.
[Screw the Unfogged italicization protocol]
56:"Just to stir the pot, people misunderstand why the Sixties turned out so badly."
The Sixties turned out great.
There was no pacifist socialist egalitarian feminist utopia just out of grasp of the stoned hippies. The country in the 60s was just as conservative, if not more so, than it is today. What got done should have been as impossible, or difficult, as single payer healthcare or the dismantling of the defense department would be today.
For 100 years blacks had lived under apartheid in the South. There was not a sudden end to racism.
A Leninist cadre of hardasses grabbed the country and got us Voting Rights and OSHA etc. One of them was named Lyndon Baines. It wasn't pretty, and even the liberals turned on them after a while.
49: Yeah, Bob is right. There's nothing much to celebrate about all Fitz's straining finally bringing forth a mouse turd.
What does a prosecutor do?
A real dedicated prosecutor threatens Monica's fucking mother and threatens to put her in jail. Think Laura heard anything in the halls? I think so. Let's jail her until she tells the truth.
Well, gee, bob, let's see if we can make sense of this.
MY describing Obama's relationship to the Civil Rights Era leaders: No. His accomplishments are lesser.
MY describing Joshua's relationship to Moses: Not, compared to Moses, the greater leader of the Jewish people. But, rather, the successor
MY describing the Sixties activists: The movements of yore accomplished a great deal and were absolutely right about the biggest issues of their time. But they made some mistakes. Mistakes that are dwarfed by the scale of their accomplishments; but nonetheless mistakes that carried a high price.
As the three relationships are meant to be parallel, it looks an awful lot like MY is saying that the Sixties activists moved heaven and earth and took this country a long way forward, but did not reach the promised land. The latter day generation doesn't have nearly the distance to try and move the country--and should be duly thankful for those that did the work--but it is the successor generation, and it should learn from the mistakes of the past. I assume he means that the country can and will move forward, but that certain forms of action are likely to have a retarding effect on that movement. This is more or less, as I understand it, exactly the point made by Eli Pariser.
64:Yeah, take statements out of context you can prove anything.
Yo, Bob, lots of good things happened in the 60s, but we ended up with Nixon-Carter-Reagan-Bush and the greatest military buildup in world history for no real purpose. We're still living with the hangover of that.
Carter was sort of minimally OK, so was Clinton, but basically it's been a 40-year nightmare.
66:I don't remember the first half of that, of course. I remember waking up and goin "Whoa, the actor? You're kidding me. I picked the wrong year to stop smoking I guess."
Why the fuck ain't my right mouse button workin. Fuck.
So the Right Wing Wurlitzer is loudly pushing the Fitzgerald-is-out-of-control and no-underlying-crime angles.
Why? Why not let it die quietly? I don't think that many people are following the Libby case closely.
Fitzgerald-is-out-of-control and no-underlying-crime angles.
Which, of course, is entirely consistent with their criticisms of Ken Starr in the 1990s.