Lew Rockwell writes:
I know that Scooter Libby, like any high-ranking apparatchik, has blood on his hands. Still, I find it hard to celebrate his conviction. First, punishing anyone for the crime of naming a CIA spy violates the first amendment. Second, he was not accused of this offense, but of lying to the FBI, etc. about it. […]
If the Bush administration had wanted to repeal the Intelligence Identities Protection Act at any time before the Plame incident, thereby making us all a little bit freer in a way we’d probably never notice (and themselves much freer to lie us into war), they could have. Hell, the GOP controlled Congress at the time! It would’ve been a breeze. But they did not wish to decriminalize that behavior, or any other. Moreover, they would have thrown me or Lew under the goddamn prison had one of us done the revealing.
Second, the fact that Libby was convicted of perjury and such instead of mass murder, which he is certainly an accomplice to, should be filed under “Some Guys Have All the Luck.” It’s as if Charles Manson had simply been convicted of hate speech for carving that wacky swastika on his forehead: I’d be against the law, but I wouldn’t be out holding a candlelight vigil for the defendant. And since Scooter has the best lawyers money can buy and a sure pardon coming his way, now ain’t the time for anyone’s tears (except maybe Cheney’s).