I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and justice of that estate

Blowing the cover of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency can't even get you the time you were sentenced, some reduced knock-down rate since you were caught doing the Vice President's dirty work, as long as you are one of the President's Men. I've been wanting to write about this for a couple of days, but I've been feeling too disappointed in the whole damn system to bring myself to it.

Here's Libby: a man who $2,000 to the RNC and $1,000 to George W. Bush in 2000 and found himself inside a dark circle, one lined with Dick Cheney and cardboard cut-outs of Dick Cheney. (This reminds me: I had a dream last night about driving through some largish - er... large-ish? - French city with Holly and buying cheese... strange dream it was.) Was the fall man for one of the cardboard cutouts. (The word on the street has it that at least two other cutouts were in separate undisclosed underground lairs, asking for sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads. Oh, and the actual VP shot another donor in the face and had a 5426409840298567th heart attack.) BUT THAT'S NEITHER HERE NOR THERE! Libby got off! He got off on a sentence where it could be claimed that he had already gotten off! Talk about the taint in Washington! It went right to Libby's jail cell.

So the President commutes his sentence, so what? Isn't that the President's Royal er... Executive Privilege? Didn't Hickory Bill Clinton pardon Marc Rich right before leaving office in 2001? Didn't he manipulate the price of oil during the oil crunch of 1973/1974? Yep. And Clinton got him off... with the help of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. I won't touch Clinton's pardon's, though... those are just dirrrrty business.

What I've never understood is how the President, as the Executive, gets to play the role of the Judiciary in issuing pardons. Looking at Clinton's list, one must be absolutely befuddled to reason why these pardons occurred, beyond the "friend" aspect of them. But politics is no place for reason! And for that reason, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and the people of that estate continue to walk free.

-rl