Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Color Me Surprised: Scooter Libby gets prison

By Diane Silver

Well, well, well... I'm officially amazed. A federal judge has sentenced the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to more than two years in prison for lying about the Valerie Plame case.

Whether or not Libby ever goes to jail remains to be seen because an appeal is pending. Still, it's good to see some accountability imposed on the we-never-take-responsibility-for-anything administration. Of course, Libby still claims he didn't do anything wrong, but then, the standard "reward" for someone making a mistake in the Bush Administration is to give them a medal.

I shall refrain today from naming any other members of the administration I believe should be tried and booted into a cold, hard cell, but I bet you all can guess the names of said folks.

And so it goes...

2 comments:

Nancy Jane Moore said...

I'm not surprised. The Washington scuttlebutt is that Judge Walton is a tough judge who takes public integrity crimes very seriously, as Andrew Cohen points out on his Washington Post blog. And, judging by press reports during the trial, the defense lost this case badly, probably because they failed to convince Judge Walton to rule in their favor on some crucial motions. I'll be surprised if the judge grants a stay pending appeal, which means Libby will do time unless Bush pardons him, even if the appeals court cuts his sentence. I also don't see much chance of the appeals court overturning the verdict -- the prosecution made their case -- but appeals courts can do strange things.

Diane Silver said...

Nancy, you are showing more faith in the judicial system than I have felt in the last few years. I hear what you're saying, but my comment comes more from my gut sense (gut fear) that no one in the Bush Administration is ever held accountable for anything. It has seemed for so long that no matter how strong the case or nasty the situation, the Bushies were untouchable. I'm glad to see that I'm wrong.