It was exactly ten years ago today that Scooter Libby was indicted over the Valerie Plame affair. For those of you who don’t eat and breathe this stuff, top people in the Bush White House leaked Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA agent to the press in order to soil the credibility of her husband, Joseph Wilson, who had questioned some of their claims about Iraq. It’s notable because it shows that Republicans, who claim to be the most patriotic party, are actually willing to commit low level treason in the name of power.
But let us not focus on that. I want to talk about Scotter Libby. He was given 30 months for his crimes. But President Bush commuted that part of his sentence. So he still owed a fine, had to be on probation for a couple of years, and had to complete some community service. But as anyone who has studied the criminal justice system knows, none of that — including the 30 months in prison — is the worst thing that happens. The worst thing is being labeled a felon and basically never being able to get a good job ever again.
Did that happen to Scooter Libby? Did he have to lie on employment applications? Did he have to cringe at the idea of a background check? Of course not! I don’t know what he’s doing now. There’s nothing much about him other then a bunch of articles about him getting his voting rights back, because he lives in the vile state of Virginia where they think people should be punished for the rest of their lives. But I assume that one of two things are going on with Libby: (1) he’s rich enough that he doesn’t need to work; or (2) he was set up in a cushy job paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by his friends.
It is this kind of thing that shows most clearly that we live in a class based society. This kind of conviction would largely destroy the life of a normal person. For Scooter Libby, it was just a bump in the road.
Wow, Bob McConnell actually supported automatic restoration of non-violent offenders. That is pretty amazing since the vast majority of those convictions would be for drugs.
http://www.hudson.org/experts/601-lewis-libby Here ya go, this is where he has been since 2005 as far as I can tell. And yes, it is a cushy job.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hudson_Institute
Maybe he was thinking they would be so high they would vote Republican!
Oh yes! I actually remember reading about that. Oh well, my brain is like an information detector. The information comes in, I detect it, and it moves out.
Is that even survivable? The amount of drugs one would have to take to vote Republican?
It probably disappeared because the nature of our memory has changed. It used to be we would remember a gazillion facts but now with the fact we can literally look up anything via our cell phones, we don’t remember things as much as we used to. At least that is what scientists have said according to something I read on iflscience.com that I surprisingly remember.
We’re more scattered. People used to have better memories because there was so much less to remember.
It was interesting watching the debate and seeing all of them (including the “journalist”) accept statements that are factually incorrect. The information is out there by we live in a post-fact world.
What, demand people be honest on the Republican side? This is not the post primary campaign!
I was out walking the dog instead of watching the debate. I think I had the better time.
You did. What kind of dog? Mutt? If so, a Snoopy kind of mutt? A Lassie kind of mutt?
The thing I’ve never understood is what leaking Plame’s identity was supposed to accomplish. “Joe Wilson says we were wrong about yellowcake uranium? Yeah, well, his wife is a CIA agent!” How exactly does that impugn his credibility? Something to do with nepotism, I think? I can’t really follow the argument.
That is what they were trying to do-claim he only was picked because of his wife. Therefore he was somehow unqualified.
It was pushed as, “Well, Wilson was only sent there because his wife was in the CIA.” So supposedly he wasn’t sent because he was the best for the job; he was just a hack who had an inside track. It’s still pathetic, but that was the idea.