Antiwar.com Blog

I don’t usually bother with the right-wing legal blog Volokh Conspiracy for reasons Jim Henley summarized years ago. So I was pleasantly surprised to find these comments on the Libby commutation.

Orin Kerr:

[W]hether Scooter Libby’s original sentence was exactly correct is an interesting question I can’t answer; while I have a rough sense it was in the right ballpark, I didn’t follow the case closely enough to have any particular views of that.

Nonetheless, I find Bush’s action very troubling because of the obvious special treatment Libby received. President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead. Come to think of it, I don’t know if Bush has ever actually used his powers to get one single person out of jail even one day early. If there are such cases, they are certainly few and far between. So Libby’s treatment was very special indeed.

Eugene Volokh chimed in with his agreement, then Kerr added this:

The Scooter Libby case has triggered some very weird commentary around the blogosphere; perhaps the weirdest claim is that the case against Libby was “purely political.”

I find this argument seriously bizarre. As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as “overwhelming” and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

I find this claim bizarre. I’m open to arguments that parts of the case against Libby were unfair. But for the case to have been purely political, doesn’t that require the involvement of someone who was not a Bush political appointee? Who are the political opponents who brought the case? Is the idea that Fitzgerald is secretly a Democratic party operative? That Judge Walton is a double agent? Or is the idea that Fitzgerald and Walton were hypnotized by “the Mainstream Media” like Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate? Seriously, I don’t get it.

I would like to hear some of you bullsh*t neolibertarians out there explain how it can be anything other than abuse of power for a president to free his cronies who have obstructed investigations into his administration while thousands of nonviolent, victimless “criminals” rot in America’s prisons.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw0629normsolomon.mp3]

Norman Solomon and Lorretta Alper discuss their new movie War Made Easy, and the similarity of the propaganda techniques from Vietnam, the current Iraq war and the next one in Iran.

MP3 here.

Norman Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics. He has been writing the weekly “Media Beat” column since 1992. Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published in 2005.

Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts.
His book “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You” (co-authored with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich) was published in 2003 by Context Books. Loretta Alper, has been on the staff of MEF since the summer of 2000, when she was hired as a freelance producer. Since joining MEF full-time in 2001, she has produced a number of titles and served as the Executive Producer on several others.

Loretta graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a B.A. in English and Communication, and she also holds a Master’s degree in Secondary English Education from UMass. She became interested in media literacy while a high school English teacher. After teaching for six years, Loretta joined the staff at MEF eager to produce video resources for teachers to utilize in their work as media educators. She has produced videos on topics ranging from media coverage of female athletes to advertising in schools to American television’s representations of working class people. She is currently producing War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death, an analysis of American war propaganda featuring media critic Norman Solomon and narrated by Sean Penn.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw070207dahrjamail.mp3]

Unembedded investigative reporter Dahr Jamail discusses the situation in Iraq, Maliki’s tenuous position, the catastrophe that has befallen the average Iraqi, tensions building up on the border between Turkey and Kurdistan and claims that Iran and Hezbollah are responsible for America’s troubles there.

MP3 here. (16:43)

In late 2003, Weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

His dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few. Dahr’s dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into French, Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, the BBC, and numerous other stations around the globe. Dahr is also special correspondent for Flashpoints.

Dahr has spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. In the MidEast, Dahr has also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Dahr uses the DahrJamailIraq.com website and his popular mailing list to disseminate his dispatches.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw070207nathentoff.mp3]

Nat Hentoff discusses the bad advice that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has given George Bush that it’s okay to torture people, the U.S. attorney scandal, the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the Hamdan decision.

MP3 here. (16:32)

In addition to his weekly Village Voice column, Hentoff writes on music for the Wall Street Journal. Among other publications in which his work has appeared are the New York Times, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years. Hentoff’s views on journalistic responsibility and the rights of Americans to write, think and speak freely are expressed in his weekly column, and he has come to be acknowledged as a foremost authority in the area of First Amendment defense. He is also an expert on the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court, student rights and education.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/charles/aw070207danfrazier.mp3]

Dan Frazier returns to the Charles Goyette show with an update on the law passed by the Arizona legislature in an attempt to criminalize his antiwar t-shirts.

MP3 here. (15:33)

Dan Frazier runs CarryABigSticker.com.

I see, via Brian Doherty over at Reason, that Scooter Libby is still going to have to pay a fine, and he’ll also be on probation. Now there‘s a job — Scooter Libby’s probation officer. I suppose Scooter will have to stay away from the CIA, and he certainly won’t be allowed near newspaper reporters: and, of course, he’ll not be allowed to consort with his criminal friends, which means no going back to his job at the Office of the Vice President. Maybe Bush can get him a sinecure at the Bureau of Cashiered Hatchet-men.