Calls for Libby Pardon The Height of Hypocrisy

It's truly remarkable how perception and opinion change with circumstance. The conservative demands for punishment of Clinton's perjury have miraculously transformed into calls for pardoning one of their own for the same crime. Granted, Scooter Libby is probably not the one who should be punished for outing Valerie (Plame) Wilson as a CIA agent, but he is apparently guilty of covering for someone else.

A National Review editorial entitled, "Pardon Libby," states:

"A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left's fevers [and] the media's scandal-mongering, and President Bush’s failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn’t have lasted beyond its opening act."

The National Review was one of the most ardent supporters of Clinton's impeachment, and when the Senate acquitted Clinton in 1999, the editors bemoaned the outcome:

Americans should not underestimate the seriousness of the situation. The Senate's vote, and the people's acquiescence, bring President Clinton formally closer to the status of a monarch than any previous chief executive. Kindergarten teachers used to tell their charges that no one was above the law, not even the President of the United States. One hopes that, for the sake of the future, they will still say so, but it is not true of this president. We are now governed instead by the principles of Byzantine jurisprudence: quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem: what pleases the prince has the force of law. Ours is, to be sure, a limited monarchy, but so was George III's. We have retroactively decided that the Battle of Saratoga was a tragic misunderstanding.

A bit dramatic, but you get the point.

The issue in both the prosecution of Mr. Libby and then-President Clinton is perjury. Both lied when testifying before a grand jury, and when issuing statements to the investigation. Yet those who railed against the crime of perjury in 1998 and 1999 seem to have found much more tolerance for the same crime in 2007.

The National Review is just one of the conservative publications calling for Bush to pardon Libby. They roundly condemn Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald for his overzealous pursuit of Libby, and chalk the whole thing up to anti-conservative politics. And yet they fail to see the obvious, copious amounts of self-righteous hypocrisy in their position.

Which gets back to the whole point of our blog and our website, www.bushscrewedamerica.com. The Bush administration is guilty of

• lying to the public about reasons for waging war on Iraq
• allowing their friends in the "defense" industry to zealously overcharge for the services they provide in the war
  
• spying on the American people with warrantless wiretaps
• violating the already dubious Patriot Act by abusing their power to write "national security letters," illegally gaining access to personal information of thousands of Americans

and now, apparently

• firing US attorneys for political reasons

Yet we STILL won't act against them. What will it take?