Liveblog: Would George Washington have Commuted a Sentence for Benedict Arnold?
Sun Jul 08, 2007 at 12:00:58 PM PDT
Last week, we saw a new low from the Bush White House. It no longer matters if you risk our national security for political purposes so long as you've played enough golf with the President (by the way my opponent was rated as the Most Improved Golfer in Congress in 2005 and can brag about having the same handicap as Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay). Of course, I am speaking of the Presidential commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 30 month prison sentence for lying to the FBI. This is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to begin, but first let me say this - Our nation was founded on the principle that NOBODY is above the law... especially in cases where National Security is at risk. Had history been written a little differently, could ever you imagine President Washington commuting a sentence for Benedict Arnold?
The case of the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby situation again brings us back to the biggest problem with this White House. There is a vulgar lack of accountability under the leadership (or lack thereof) of President George W. Bush. This is a disease which has spread throughout the Republican leadership and threatens to erode the very foundation of our Democracy.
Today, I'm going to break from the norm, because this is an issue that I absolutely must address in the wake of this unfair and unjust action by the President. I hope you will join the discussion as I will be liveblogging from 3-6 pm eastern today.
Accountability, Honesty, and a man named Scooter.
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
On July 6th of 2003, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a lifelong diplomat with over 23 years of service, published a piece in the New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa" about his CIA mission and the famous 16 words in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. Mr. Wilson was sent to Africa on a CIA mission to get to the bottom of the British claim, and returned to report that nothing was going on. Days before the State of the Union Address, Wilson supplied his findings to the CIA, who in turn told the White House that the British were wrong on this one. This of course didn't matter to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush team... they needed to sell this god forsaken war to the public, and it didn't matter what was true and what was not.
Following the publication of Wilson's rebuttal in the NY Times, it was revealed in a column by rightwing pundit Robert Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative. As I'm sure all of you remember, this turned into quite a fiasco with Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times going to jail for a little while (though Novak avoided any punishment despite the fact that he published it first).
One thing led to another and eventually we ended up with Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, being convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, one count of making false statements to the FBI and two counts of perjury. Due to the fact that Plame was an undercover CIA operative, this could be construed as treason, but he wasn't charged as such since he was not indicted for actually releasing the information. Libby was ultimately sentenced to 30 months in jail, fined $250,000, and two years of probation. However, on the day before Independence Day, President Bush, a man who would not commute the death penalty on a mentally retarded man, let his friend off the hook.
In order for our Justice system to work properly, there must be accountability, and this White House has made a regular practice of avoiding being held responsible for anything. Hurricane Katrina was Michael Brown's fault, the lack of WMD's in Iraq was George Tenet's fault, and everything else is Al Qaeda's fault. What ever happened to "The Buck Stops Here?" How is it that a man can be convicted of covering up an act of treason and receive such a weak slap on the wrist?
Accountability
Folks, there is a very simple solution to problems like this. We need to surgically reinstall the President and Congress' spines, or in other words, we need to win the White House and take enough seats to have an FDR Majority in Congress. The current system is not working and the President is still not listening to the American Public. Right now 64% of Americans think Bush did the wrong thing by commuting Libby's sentence. The only way we can truly voice our opposition to this is to get to the polls each and every November and tell them what you think with your vote.
My opponent, Congressman Randy Kuhl has made a career out of rubberstamping George Bush's agenda, and he has yet to comment on Scooter Libby’s new lease on freedom. He has refused to hold this administration responsible for anything, and this is a big reason why I am running against him again. Folks, I wish there was a more detailed solution I could offer, but the key really is just replacing rubberstampers with leaders.
When I am elected to Congress, I promise that I will never defend a President that will compromise national security for political reasons or disregard the rule of law to get his friend off the hook. I am not running to be a career Washington insider, I am running to change our country and set us back on the right course. However I need your help to achieve this goal. As a strong supporter of Clean Money/Clean Elections reform, I do not accept any Corporate PAC contributions, so I rely on your $500, $100, and $25 donations to run our grassroots campaign.
With that, I am standing by to answer any and all questions, so please leave your comments or contact me at my website.
Thank you,
-Eric Massa
Permalink | 19 comments