Exactly

Jonah Goldberg is beside himself with the injustice of it all. Or, rather, with the justice of it all.

SURE, SURE, "Scooter" Libby might go to jail. His career is in tatters, his life a shambles. Even Denis Collins, the omnipresent juror-journalist, says he and his peers feel sympathy for Libby, the "fall guy" in this whole spectacle. But really, who is the real victim?

Joe and Valerie, of course.

[...]

Just last month, the golden couple was spied lunching with Morgan Fairchild at the Four Seasons in Washington. The trio supped on soup and salad and shared a lovely mushroom risotto, which probably won't be on the menu wherever they send Libby. You'd think the golden couple would rate higher than the faded star of "Falcon Crest." But there's a buzz that she might play Valerie in the movie Warner Bros. has just green-lighted about Valerie's life. Other boldface names under consideration include Sharon Stone and Gwyneth Paltrow, so it was really a kindness for the Wilsons to even take the meeting.

Um... well, yeah.

That's what happens when a jury of your peers finds you guilty of a felony. You're a criminal. Criminals go to prison.

On the other hand, people who don't get convicted of felonies don't have to go to prison. They get to do whatever they want. They get to hobnob with celebrities and eat risotto (may I just say, "yum?") and go to Hollywood to have movies made of their lives and cash in on multi-million-dollar book deals. They get to sleep in on Sundays and go to Starbucks for lattes and enjoy long, lazy drives in the country. People who aren't convicted felons get to live the prosperous lives of law-abiding free people. That's the way it works. You could call it the American way.

Nobody forced Scooter Libby to break the law. He made a choice. If Libby wanted to live the life of a free man, rather than that of a prison inmate, he should have made different choices.

And, yes, Joe and Valerie, along with the American people, were the victims. Scooter Libby is not a victim. He is a criminal.

Pardon?

I could be misreading this, but it seems that conservatives are making it almost impossible for Bush to pardon Scooter Libby.

Libby's allies said Bush should not wait for Libby to be sentenced, and should use his executive power to spare Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff the risk of prison time for lying to a grand jury and FBI agents about his role in leaking the name of an undercover CIA officer. But the prospect of a pardon triggered condemnation from Democrats and caution from some Republicans wary of another furor.

Defense lawyers for Libby said they are focused on seeking a new trial and appealing Tuesday's jury verdict, while making clear that they believe the president should step in. "Our number one goal is to see Scooter's conviction wiped out by the courts and see him vindicated," attorney William Jeffress Jr. said in an interview. "Now, I've seen all the calls for a pardon. And I agree with them. To me, he should have been pardoned six months ago or a year ago."

The pardon drum beat started within moments of the announcement of the verdict, and has only grown stronger since then. Every story about the verdict includes some speculation as to whether Bush should or will issue a pardon. In some corners of conservative media machine, the pardon is discussed almost as a fait accompli. They seem to be counting on it. I think this is counterproductive.

George W. Bush's entire political persona is built on the image Karl Rove crafted for him as The Leader. He is a man of strength and of few words. He is the one who keeps his head while all those about him are losing theirs. He pays no attention to the polls, because you cannot lead that way. He is not a follower.

If Bush issues a pardon to Libby, he becomes a joke. He is no longer The Leader. He is a donkey led around by his nose. He is merely a vessel for the political will of people smarter and more calculating than he is. And his presidency is over.

If Bush issues a pardon to Scooter Libby any time before December 2008, it will be blood in the water for his political adversaries. It will be a sign of weakness so stark, so undeniable, that he might as well call it a day and head on back to Crawford for good. His supporters will abandon him in droves. They won't need him anymore. He won't be able to do anything for them. Everything that matters to him, including his grand, glorious war in Iraq, will be fair game for his opponents. Remember the scene in Cool Hand Luke when the inmates eat all of Luke's rice, and he just sits there and lets them.

If he issues a pardon on his way out of office, it will compete with the Iraq war for the thing people remember most about him. There goes his legacy.

If the advocates of a pardon had kept their mouths shut in public, and worked behind the scenes to make it happen, they had a chance. Now, though, I think they have blown it.

Libby Reax; Myths

Media Matters has a list of myths to watch out for in the press coverage of the Libby verdict.

• No underlying crime was committed



• There was no concerted White House effort to smear Wilson



• Libby was not responsible for the leak of Plame's identity



• Libby merely "left out some facts



• Libby's leak was an effort to set the record straight



• There is no evidence that the Plame leak compromised national security



• Fitzgerald is a partisan prosecutor



• Fitzgerald exceeded his mandate in investigating violations beyond the IIPA



• Plame's employment with the CIA was widely known

The full deconstruction of each myth is available at the Media Matters link above. Of course, the first myth, suggesting that there was no underlying crime, has been addressed here, as well.

Guilty

UPDATED

Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Case

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI.

The reaction from the right wing will be that the conviction of Libby is a travesty due to the fact that nobody was ever indicted for leaking Valerie Wilson's name to the media. Let us hope that the press can keep one thing in mind: the fact that nobody was indicted for leaking Valerie Wilson's name is a meaningless Bush administration talking point.

As I have written previously:

The charges against Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice are not mitigated by the fact that nobody was indicted for leaking Valerie Wilson's name to the news media. They are validated by that fact. The rest of it is just a Bush administration talking point designed to distract people from the real issue.

Scooter Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice precisely because his lies to federal investigators made it impossible to discover who directed and participated in the leak. This is not difficult to understand. Fitzgerald contends that Libby's lies kept justice from being carried out in the investigation to determine who exposed the undercover identity of a CIA operative. This is why Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, while nobody was indicted for the leak. He lied in order to keep administration officials (read: Dick Cheney) from being indicted.

Supporters of the Bush administration will, as they have done before, argue that President Bush should pardon Scooter Libby. Part of that argument will hinge on the fact that nobody was ever indicted for the crime of leaking Valerie Wilson's name. That argument is nonsense and everyone should disregard it as such.

UPDATE

From Fox "News" Channel, reaction from the White House:

Watching from the Oval Office, President Bush was saddened by the news but respected the verdict, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. She said Bush has not spoken with Cheney yet as Cheney was on his way to a Senate policy lunch.

Dang. The poor sap is on his way to prison for Cheney, and Deadeye Dick can't pause long enough to be a few minutes late for lunch. That's cold.

UPDATE II

From Andrew Cohen, legal columnist for the Washington Post:

Indeed, even more than Libby, who is looking at prison time, Cheney gets my vote for the biggest loser in all of this.

Why? Before the trial, his adversaries considered him a ruthless, nasty politician who was the big-picture dark architect of the Bush Administration's most vital policies, foreign and domestic. After the trial, added as a layer upon that ugly perception, Cheney's friends and opponents alike now have to concede that he was also in this instance at least a meddling, petty bureaucrat who spent time at his undisclosed secure location worrying about how the White House would get back at Wilson, a penny-ante operator in the high-stakes game of politics over Iraq.

Nah. I don't think so.

A felony conviction and imprisonment for Libby trumps Cheney's loss of mystique as Dark Lord of the Sith. As noted above, Cheney is already over it. The bastard couldn't spare any time to talk about the verdict with the president if it meant being late for drinks and appetizers.

UPDATE III

Fox "News" flapping gums Fred Barnes, via TPM:

I would stop short of calling it politically devastating, however, because no one was charged with an underlying crime here of actually having illegally leaked the name of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. We know who the original leaker was - Richard Armitage at the State Department - but he wasn't charged, nor was anyone else. So this is not quite as devastating as it could be if there was some underlying crime.

Fred is correct. Politically, it is not as devastating as if someone had been charged with the underlying crime of leaking Valerie Wilson's name to the press. Therein lies the significance of the trial, conviction and pending imprisonment of Scooter Libby. He lied in order to limit the political damage to the Bush administration. In that effort, he was successful. He just didn't get away with it.

UPDATE IV

Cheney, back from lunch:

"I am very disappointed with the verdict," Cheney said in a statement. "Scooter served our nation tirelessly and with great distinction through many years of public service."

Libby; Obstruction of Justice

The big news of the day from Scooter Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice trial is that a juror was removed from the deliberations for being exposed to media coverage of the trial. Details at FDL.

I am by no means an expert on, or even an obsessive follower of, the Libby trial or the leak case which facilitated it, but I do know enough about it to know when I see unvarnished administration talking points tainting the news coverage of the trial.

On Friday, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonig wrote the following in a story about the deliberations phase:

When the jury in I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's perjury trial returns with its verdict, its decision also will intensify the debate over whether Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald should have brought the case in the first place.

For Fitzgerald, who has led the CIA leak investigation for more than three years, an acquittal for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff would be a blow to a reputation as a nonpartisan prosecutor with a record of high-profile successes. Some say it would vindicate critics who think Fitzgerald went too far by charging Libby with perjury when no one was indicted for the original offense investigated, the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name.

Is it too much to ask of the Post that they don't allow reporters to write about matters they clearly do not understand?

The charges against Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice are not mitigated by the fact that nobody was indicted for leaking Valerie Wilson's name to the news media. They are validated by that fact. The rest of it is just a Bush administration talking point designed to distract people from the real issue.

Scooter Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice precisely because his lies to federal investigators made it impossible to discover who directed and participated in the leak. This is not difficult to understand. Fitzgerald contends that Libby's lies kept justice from being carried out in the investigation to determine who exposed the undercover identity of a CIA operative. This is why Libby was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, while nobody was indicted for the leak. He lied in order to keep administration officials (read: Dick Cheney) from being indicted. Anybody paying even superficial attention to this case should know this. Fitzgerald explained it when he announced the indictment against Libby. Leonig could have learned this by reading the transcript on the website of the Washington Post.

QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, the Republicans previewed some talking points in anticipation of your indictment and they said that if you didn't indict on the underlying crimes and you indicted on things exactly like you did indict -- false statements, perjury, obstruction -- these were, quote/unquote, "technicalities," and that it really was over reaching and excessive.

And since, when and if they make those claims, now that you have indicted, you won't respond, I want to give you an opportunity now to respond to that allegation which they may make. It seems like that's the road they're going down.

FITZGERALD: And I don't know who provided those talking points. I assume...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

FITZGERALD: I'm not asking -- OK.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

FITZGERALD: I'll be blunt.

That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.

FITZGERALD: And I'd say this: I think people might not understand this. We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time. The Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time.

When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.

If you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.

In other words, when witnesses lie to the grand jury, the grand jury does not have the information it needs to make informed decisions as to whether it should indict someone for a crime. When witnesses lie to the grand jury, justice cannot be done.

Scooter Libby lied to investigators and to the grand jury, and by lying , he obstructed justice. The fact that nobody was indicted for leaking Valerie Wilson's undercover identity is the evidence of Libby's success at obstructing the investigation. And, as we see here, the talking point suggesting otherwise was identified as such long before Libby's trial ever started. The only thing Fitzgerald got wrong was his assertion that it "won't fly."

As Carol Leonig proved with this story, the talking point doesn't just fly. It soars.