July 3, 2007--"Excessive"?

Once again we have a President of the United States struggling with a definition. Most recently, Bill Clinton, when confronted with the accusation that he had sexual relations” with “that woman,” famously said: “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

With his successor, President Bush, we now have a glimpse of his ruminations about the definition of “excessive.” In this case, of course, how it applies to the sentencing of Scooter Libby. Though Bush said, when commuting Scooter’s 30-month prison sentence, that he “respected” the jury’s verdict, he “concluded” “after carefully weighing” all the arguments surrounding the case, that the sentence is “excessive.” And thus he set it aside, cleverly “commuting” it rather than “pardoning” Libby. (Though he can still do that later or at the end of his term.) (See linked NY Times story.)

Never mind that the federal prosecutor was a Republican; forget that the trial judge, a Republican appointee, followed the Federal Sentencing Guidelines which were signed into law by George H. W. Bush, a sentence upheld yesterday by a three-judge appeals court with a Republican majority, including one who was appointed by George W. Bush; forget that this is Bush’s first use, after six and a half years, of his presidential power to grant clemency; forget that as Texas governor he presided over 131 executions, granting just one stay based on DNA evidence but in not one case offering clemency to anyone; but do remember that if he really wanted to pander to his waning right-wing base, shouldn’t he himself be guided by federal law and remain strong in the face of serious crimes? Isn’t that what true conservatives stand for? How do they put it when packing the federal courts—they appoint “strict constructionists” who do not “legislate from the bench”? (Though apparently it’s OK to do so from the White House.)

The folks who are applauding the President’s sense of justice and generosity of spirit are the very same ones who demand that judges follow sentencing guidelines after the conviction of drug dealers—five years mandatory for first offenders who are caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine (that’s just 0.18 of an ounce). As a sidebar, the more middle-class “crime” of possessing powder cocaine requires the same five-year sentence for being caught with 100 times as much—500 grams.

Let’s be frank here—President Bush did what he did not out of concern for the excessiveness of the sentence. If that was his issue he could have cut the time to be served in half—say 15, rather than 30 months. Or would that also be excessive?

No, this was not about being compassionate; it was done to assure that Scooter Libby keeps his mouth shut. In his dual role as advisor to the President and Chief-of-Staff to Vice President Cheney, oh what stories he could tell. So the scary thought that if Scooter had been hustled off yesterday to a Paris Hilton-type cell, locked down for 23 hours a day, and then had to fend off Sweet Pea in the shower, how long do you think it would it take before he placed a call to the federal prosecutor, clamoring to make a deal? Two days? A week?