Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Skooter Skates

Will Durst on Libby's pardon:

If Bush had explained that he wiped away the VP's right hand man's sentence of 30 months for perjury in federal court, because you can't send a man named Scooter to prison, I would have understood. But the excuse used was the sentence was "excessive." And we Americans who are just 19 months shy of serving our full 96 month sentence living under the fear mongering, torture outsourcing, and middle class eradication efforts of this Administration, can totally relate.

"Excessive." That's what he called it. This is the same guy who when running for governor of Texas actually said out loud in front of people with microphones sticking out of their hands that he wanted to "stiffen the death penalty." Stiffen the death penalty? What the hell does that mean? Was he going to apply it twice? Were doctors mandated not to rub alcohol on the point of insertion before lethal injections? Did he empanel a blue ribbon committee to figure out a way of how to dump the electric chair and wire up some bleachers?

But when it came to punishing his string puller's best friend, the President's compassion predictably welled up like a zit the morning of picture day in 8th grade. He did keep intact the other part of Mr. Libby's sentence; the $250,000 fine, but that didn't seem to pose much of a hardship, as the skedaddling scofflaw simply wrote a personal check for it. Don't feel too bad for him. I'm sure he'll be reimbursed by the Scooter Libby Defense Fund or as we are used to calling it: Halliburton.

Only too true.

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