He is compassionate after all, isn't he? Thirty months is just too excessive. Well, at least when it comes to the right kind of people: He has different plans for everyone else:
The Bush administration is trying to roll back a
Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for
nearly all criminals.
The Justice Department is offering the plan as
an opening salvo in a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine
are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory.
Republicans are seizing the administration's
crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue
for 2008.
In a speech June 1 to announce the bill,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged Congress to re-impose mandatory minimum
prison sentences against federal convicts — and not let judges consider such
penalties “merely a suggestion.”
[...] Judges, however, were livid over the proposal to
limit their power.
“This would require one-size-fits-all justice,”
said U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell, chairman of the Criminal Law committee
of the Judicial Conference, the judicial branch's policy-making
body.
“The vast majority of the public would like the
judges to make the individualized decisions needed to make these very difficult
sentencing decisions,” Cassell said. “Judges are the ones who look the
defendants in the eyes. They hear from the victims. They hear from the
prosecutors.”
[...] The Justice Department wants to return to the
old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant
leniency only in special cases. Without those required floors, Justice officials
maintain that different judges could hand out widely varying penalties for the
same crime.
Justice officials also point to a growing number
of lighter sentences as possible proof that crime is on the rise because
criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties.
I heard GOP strategist Ed Rollins say earlier that "it's always hard to see a man like this go to jail," which is so true. He's not "one of them" you know. (Like these awful people, for instance.)
So, at the same time that Republicans have been urging Bush to pardon Libby, expressing either silence or approval when Bush commutes his sentence, the Bush Justice Department "wants to return to the old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant leniency only in special cases" as the Bush Administratin is "pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals." And meanwhile, "Republicans are seizing the administration's crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue for 2008."
As if that isn't outrageous enough, this same Justice Department is under congressional investigation and mired in its own scandal. Here is a summary of the current investigations into the activities of the Justice Department and their connection to the Republican party from one of the most reputable sources in the print media:
The investigations into the Bush administration’s decision to fire nine U.S. attorneys have exposed how the administration has eroded the firewall between partisan politics and the Justice Department and compromised the independence of the nation's top law enforcement agency.
As early as 2002, administration policymakers, Republican legislators and GOP party officials began injecting politics into criminal investigations and civil and voting rights enforcement and applying political litmus tests to judges and career lawyers at the Justice Department.
Based on what has come out so far, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush Adminstration has politicized a brach of the federal government that has historically been one of the most independent and immune to politicization. What we are learning from the scandal and investigations surrounding the firing of the U.S. Attorneys and politically motivated interferring in prosecutions is profoundly disturbing (but more on that later as it deserves much more attention). This same Justice Department now wants minimum sentencing while Bush commutes the sentence for conviction of obstruction of justice of the former aide to the Vice President.
Repbulicans have gone out of the way to paint themselves as the law and order party, as the party that is tough on crime, all about personal responsibility, dealing with the consequences of one's action etc. The Republican party, in fact, is only about the Republican party, taking care of its own, covering its ass--the rule of law, principles, and broader concerns of justice and fairness be damned.
The phony law and order, tough on crime stance is just a tool to be used, as we see with the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney scandal, against the political opposition and, as we see with Bush's records of pardons, against the poor class of criminals and those deemed "unworthy" of justice and mercy. In pointing this out, Digby mentions Bush's appalling lack of compassion while governor of Texas and Lawyers, Guns, and Money excerpts this letter to the editor of NY Times addressing this as well, and the letter is well worth reading:
To the Editor:
When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he presided over more than 150 executions. In more than one-third of the cases — 57 in all — lawyers representing condemned inmates asked then-Governor Bush for a commutation of sentence, so that the inmates would serve life in prison rather than face execution.
Some of these inmates had been represented by lawyers who slept during trials. Some were mentally retarded. Some were juveniles at the time they committed the crime for which they were sentenced to death.
In all these cases, Governor Bush refused to commute their sentences, saying that the inmates had had full access to the judicial system.I. Lewis Libby Jr. had the best lawyers money can buy. His crime cannot be attributed to youth or retardation. He has expressed no remorse whatsoever for lying to a grand jury or participating in the administration’s effort to mislead the American people about the war in Iraq. President Bush’s commutation of Mr. Libby’s sentence is certainly legal, but it just as surely offends the fundamental constitutional value of equality.
Because President Bush signed a commutation, a rich and powerful man will spend not a day in prison, while 57 poor and poorly connected human beings died because Governor Bush refused to lift a pen for them.
David R. DowHouston, July 3, 2007
The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who represents death row inmates, including several who sought commutation from then-Governor Bush.
Apparently, a draconian view of crime and punishment is reasonable for all but powerfully connected Republicans as Talking Points Memo also reports that Mitt Romney refused to ever issue a commutation or pardon for anyone while governor of Massachusettes making him the first governor in that state's history to hold that title. One such request for a pardon was submitted by a soldier serving in Iraq who was convicted of assault when he was 13 for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun and the other boy wasn't even injured. This soldier "worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle." He requested the pardon, while still in Iraq, so that he could continue to serve his community by becoming a police officer after he finished serving his country in Iraq. Mitt, not seeing fit to grant a pardon to someone so obviously deserving for so many reason, believes Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence is "reasonable."
To further illustrate to the slavish devotion to powerful, no matter what their crimes, this was reported yesterday about Fred Thompson, who was also pleased that Libby's sentence was commuted:
The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.
Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public... It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.
"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."
I believe it would be impossible to find a more glaring example of rank hypocrisy and blatant disregard for the ideal of "justice for all" than that which is exemplified in these stories, all part of a much bigger pictures, that are coming out in the wash, so to speak, as Bush exercises his special powers in favor of little Scooter.
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