The Constitution give the president certain powers...and imposes certain duties (Art. II).
Duty #1 is that "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Sec. 3. The president is the head of a department (the Executive) or branch that consists of all of the executive agencies created by Congress. He (or she, someday) is supposed to see that they carry out their functions in accordance with the terms of the Constitution. That's why the president swears an oath of office to "preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States." So do all of the other federal, and state, officials of government.
One of the president's powers (Sec. 2.1) is that "he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
Yesterday the president commuted the 30-month federal prison sentence imposed by a federal judge, following trial and conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice on Lawrence "Scooter" Libby. The president let stand, at least so far, the conviction, the $250,000 fine, and the two-year period of probation. There seems to be no constitutional reason that the president couldn't erase those, say on his last day in office, as Pres. Clinton did for big donors and other newly worthy citizens who'd cleaned up their act.
Thirty months jail is too much, says the president, George W. Bush.
There's something about granting clemency to one's fellow gang-member that strikes me as being too much like Tony Soprano having the power to grant a commutation of the sentence of a henchman who whacks a rival gang member, at the request of Tony or one of his boys.
Why does he do this? I wonder.
Is it because the sentence is really too severe?
Or, is it because if he doesn't take care of one of the boys, he might, while serving his sentence, decide to cooperate with his prosecutor and spill the beans on who put him up to whacking Vito in the first place?
Somehow, I don't suspect Pres. Bush of being soft on crime, or fearing that 30 months in the federal gulag is too severe for people who lie under oath to federal law enforcement officials, grand juries, or at trial. After all, thirty months is within the federal sentencing guidelines that Pres. Bush's federal prosecutors are sworn faithfully to take care are carried out. Especially after the accused takes the prosecutor to the mat at trial and later expresses no contrition or remorse.
Usually before the president grants clemency, the office in the Justice Department which reviews the applications wants to see that some time has been served and the individual has repented his wrongdoing. That hasn't happened here.
This is taking care of one of our own.
Since the president is exercising a power expressly granted to him, clemency, I don't see a constitutional problem with exercising it partially (commuting the jail portion of the sentence before it even starts) when he could have exercised it fully (vacated the entire conviction and sentence).
I see a political storm in the making, but that's not the same as a constitutional law problem, at least not as to that portion of the text, no matter how much one may think the clemency was self-protective of the president (or V.P. Richard "Darth Vader" Dick Cheney to keep Libby's mouth shut when it comes to the bigger fish) rather than sudden heartfelt remorse about seeing yet another miscreant headed to the federal pokey.
I do see a question as to whether the president is faithfully carrying out the nation's laws, however.
There's a reason we have federal laws against lying to government investigators and juries. The theory is that we are somehow after the truth. We don't want to see too many people going to jail based on government lies, although we don't seem to mind killing a lot of people in Iraq based on lies told by George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell. But they weren't under oath, were they, Why don't we get back to Scooter before you become upset.
Has the president taken care to faithfully execute the nation's laws against lying to the government?
Why should we be surprised that a president who has never apologized to his masters, his employers, the shareholders, you know, the People, as in "We, the People..." (see the Constitution, Preamble) for lying to get us into Iraq, want to see old Scooter sent to prison for lying as part of the effort to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, by outing his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer? Which is what Libby did to get in trouble in the first place, and then lying about it under oath, thus earning the prison sentence.
If Bush had let Scooter go to prison, a lot of people would wonder why Cheney and Bush weren't sharing the same cell. I'm wondering that myself.
But as I said, when the Constitution gives Tony Soprano the power to spring a jailbird to keep him from singing on the bigger fish up the line, Big Tony doesn't have to worry about frying himself, does he?
And as for the political fallout, when you're term-limited out, as Big W is, we can let someone else worry about that, can't we?
Why, I wonder, does the president allow the other sentencing terms to stand? A collection has been taken among supporters that will pay the fine.
But the Scooter remains on probation for the next two years. Is this designed to keep him under control? Getting rid of the jail term eliminates some of the bitterness that the Libby must feel towards a seemingly ungrateful VP and president who skate while Scooter is allowed to dangle slowly, slowly, in the wind. Now there seems to be little reason for Libby to spill the beans about how he knew, because Cheney told him, that the president had said it was okay to spill the beans on Valerie Plame to fix Joseph Wilson. But maybe it wouldn't be smart to go around like a bull in a china shop and bad mouth the big guys while you're still on federal probation, and your federal P.O.'s boss answers to higher-ups in the bureaucratic chain that leads to you-know-where, the White House, now a bitter shade of gray, tarnished with black soot from the witches' fire burning in the basement.
Below is an article on the president's decision, appearing in the NYT on July 4th, tomorrow. I'll let you know when the Times reports the race results the day before, too.
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Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on Decision
Bush Is Said to Have Held Long Debate on Decision
WASHINGTON, July 3 — Before commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., President Bush and a small circle of advisers delved deeply into the evidence in the case, debating Mr. Libby’s guilt or innocence and whether he had in fact lied to investigators, people familiar with the deliberations said.
That process, in weeks of closely held White House discussions, led to the decision to spare Mr. Libby from a 30-month sentence rather than grant a pardon. But Mr. Bush, defending the move Tuesday, left the door open to a pardon in the future.
“I weighed this decision carefully,” the president told reporters after visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “I thought that the jury verdict should stand. I felt the punishment was severe, so I made a decision that would commute his sentence but leave in place a serious fine and probation. As to the future, I rule nothing in or nothing out.”
The decision brought a storm of criticism, as well as a new investigation on Capitol Hill. Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced Tuesday that he would hold a hearing next week to examine “the use and misuse of presidential clemency power” for executive branch officials.
The White House deliberations in the case of Mr. Libby, a key architect of the war in Iraq who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, were scattered throughout Mr. Bush’s regular business over the past several weeks, an administration official said.
That description, along with the accounts of two Republican allies of the White House, illuminated a process that was almost clinical, with a detailed focus on the facts of the case, which stemmed from an investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity. Mr. Libby was accused of lying to investigators and was convicted on four felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
Because the deliberations were so closely held, those who spoke about them agreed to do so only anonymously. But by several different accounts, Mr. Bush spent weeks thinking about the case against Mr. Libby and consulting closely with senior officials, including Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel; and Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s departing counselor.
“They were digging deeply into the substance of the charges against him, and the defense for him,” one of the Republicans close to the White House said.
The second Republican said the overarching question was “did he lie?”
Mr. Bush has not publicly offered his conclusion to that question, nor have his aides. In his statements about the commutation, the president has said only that he respects the jury’s verdict and that his interest was in reducing what he regarded as an overly severe sentence.
“I felt like some of the punishments that the judge determined were adequate should stand,” Mr. Bush told reporters Tuesday. “But I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe, made a judgment, a considered judgment, that I believe is the right decision to make in this case, and I stand by it.”
In issuing his commutation order on Monday, Mr. Bush left intact Mr. Libby’s conviction, a $250,000 fine and the two years of postprison supervised release that were ordered by Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court.
But the details of the president’s order raised procedural questions in court.
Judge Walton said Tuesday that the law did not allow for imposing a period of supervised release on an individual who had not first completed a jail sentence. He asked the lawyers for both sides to submit briefs next week on whether Mr. Libby should have to submit to supervision by the probation office.
Mr. Bush has issued 113 pardons and commuted four sentences, including Mr. Libby’s, during his presidency, but no act of clemency has been as controversial as the Libby decision. The C.I.A. leak case raised impassioned questions about the administration’s flawed intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, and whether officials at the highest reaches of the White House, including Mr. Cheney, ordered the leak of the identity of the operative, Valerie Wilson, to discredit her husband, a war critic.
Both critics of the administration and supporters of Mr. Libby viewed him as a fall guy in the case, and Mr. Bush had been under intense pressure from conservatives to issue a pardon, which constitutes an official act of forgiveness.
Pardons are typically reviewed by the Justice Department and sent to the president for a final determination. But a former administration official said that in this case the White House had sent a message of “we’re not going through the usual pardon scrub, we’re going through this one ourselves.”
The process was delicate. Karl Rove, the chief White House strategist and one of Mr. Bush’s closest and longest-serving aides, had been implicated in the leak investigation, and it was unclear how extensive a role he played in the deliberations.
The special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, ultimately decided not to pursue charges against Mr. Rove. Some Republicans said they believed that Mr. Rove steered clear of the pardon discussions, perhaps because his participation would have been awkward.
“I talk to Karl a lot, and I just never got any sense that he was involved in that at all,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman who said he believed that Mr. Libby should be pardoned.
Mr. Weber also said he was concerned about Mr. Bush’s statement Tuesday, in which the president said he believed that the jury verdict should stand. “It disturbs me,” he said, “because the president has set himself up for more criticism if indeed he does issue a full pardon, which I think he should.”
Another question that remained open Tuesday is to what extent Mr. Cheney participated. Aides to the vice president have said he regarded Mr. Libby’s conviction as a tragedy, but people close to Mr. Cheney said they did not know what conversations, if any, the vice president had with the president about the commutation decision.
The White House was besieged by criticism over the decision Tuesday. Before Mr. Bush spoke at Walter Reed, his press secretary, Tony Snow, fended off an unruly press corps, whose members demanded to know why Mr. Libby had received special treatment. Mr. Snow insisted that he had not, saying the case had been handled in a “routine manner.”
“The president does not look upon this as granting a favor to anyone,” Mr. Snow said, “and to do that is to misconstrue the nature of the deliberations.”
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