Assumptions

Brendan Nyhan criticizes liberals for simply assuming the existence of an underlying crime in the Scooter Libby case and sweeps my post here into that rubric, wondering of Libby "Couldn't he just be protecting his superiors from exposure of embarrassing but non-criminal conduct?" He certainly could. But let's assume that's true. Is "I broke the law to help my boss cover-up embarrassing but non-criminal conduct" a reasonable case for lenience? No. Is "he broke the law to help me cover-up embarrassing by non-criminal conduct" a reasonable case for granting someone clemency? Also no.

The bottom line is that on one theory -- Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their lawbreaking, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing lawbreaking -- Libby deserves to go to jail and Bush has seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby. On Nyhan's alternative theory -- Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct -- Libby also deserves to go to hail and Bush has also seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby.

This -- that the President of the United States is abusing his power in a serious way -- is a substantially more important issue than the question of whether Josh Marshall should be slightly more circumspect in his characterization of the serious abuses of power.

UPDATE: See Brendan's update. Bottom-line, I think it's rock solid that Bush abused his power, and until someone can offer a plausible account of what kind of non-criminal conduct Libby is helping to cover-up, I'm not going to be too upset if people assume that what's being covered-up was, in fact, a crime. The fact that Bush is actively and openly participating in the cover-up (and there's no serious doubt that something is being covered-up) naturally whets one's suspicions. Bush and Cheney are, however, clearly entitled to a legal presumption of innocence.

Comments

i pretty much gave up on nyhan quite a while ago, but you made me click through.

putting aside the egregiously phony notion that concluding, at the end of an investigation in which only one person (ultimately) lied, that the lie likely has meaning, is exactly the same as accusing bill clinton of the crime-of-the-day in the '90s whenever matt drudge had a new headling, nyhan refuses to take seriously that covering up for your superior whether or not the superior committed an overt violation of the IIPA is still obstruction of justice. and commuting his sentence to eliminate the risk that prison would concentrate his mind is still part of that obstruction.

we'll also note that nyhan appears to have trouble grasping that just because armitage is a big mouth, the fact that he was the first leaker has squat to do with whether or not libby is covering for an IIPA violation by Cheney.

and now i'll return to my blissful nyhan-free existence: this is only too typical from what i remember about his work.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 10:22 AM

Holy shite. Did Andrew Sullivan just ask for Bush's impeachment?

Posted by otm shank | July 6, 2007 10:37 AM

Oh, your twisted logic hurts! It burns! Cover-up illegal, so cover-up still illegal even if covers up only embarrassment! Too much logic! Brain hurts! Need .... Fox News .....

Posted by dcbob | July 6, 2007 10:42 AM

I liked Nyhan's response -

Yglesias conceded my point while ignoring your larger point - that his point is pointless.

He is not very bright in my experience.

Posted by Armando | July 6, 2007 10:53 AM

There's both a legal offense and a political offense-- One can sort-of-reasonably argue that the legal offense is less serious than the political offense... But that doesn't make either one OK.

Posted by MattF | July 6, 2007 10:57 AM

You concede too much. First, read the Tatel concurrence. http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/ docs/common/opinions/200502/04-3138a.pdf "Most telling of all, Harlow, the CIA spokesperson, though confirming Plame’s employment, asked Novak to withhold her name, stating that 'although it is very unlikely that she will ever be on another overseas mission . . . it might be embarrassing if she goes on foreign travel on her own.'
(II-168-69), a statement that strongly implies Plame was covert at least at some point...While another case might require more specific evidence that a leak harmed national security, this showing suffices here, given the information’s extremely slight news value and the lack of any serious dispute regarding Plame’s employment." No matter how many times the wingnuts on TV want to chant "wasn't covert," their view conflicts with that of the CIA, the FBI, Fitzgerald, Walton and the three judges on the D.C. Circuit all believed that, at a minimum, Fitzgerald had enough to go to trial on that point. At the time when the D.C. Circuit effectively sent Miller and Cooper to jail, it was their belief that his investigation into that crime had been obstructed, and that the reporters were the only figures who might have the relevant information for Fitzgerald. Tatel states in the opinion that "Given the evidence contradicting Libby’s testimony, the special counsel appears already to have at least circumstantial grounds for a perjury charge, if nothing else...Insofar as false testimony may have impaired the special counsel’s identification of culprits, perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications." That panel went out of its way to carve out space for a shield law, and as Tatel said in the concurrence, if the privilege exists, it was overcome. It wasn't overcome to charge perjury in absence of the national security threat posed by the leaking behavior. The conclusion of the panel was that the Prosecutor had been obstructed in his investigation of a national security crime. These judges who are all much better lawyers and students of the law than any of the gasbags you'll see on Hardball; Tatel is one of the top two or three feeder judges for Supreme Court clerkships.

Second, Karl Rove was within a hair's breath of an indictment. Nevermind whatever Bush and Cheney did or didn't do. Rove's enough to provide a motive for quid pro quo. His cover story about the magic emails was conceivably assailable from someone in Libby or Cheney's position. With Libby facing jail time, and with the administrations steadfast refusal to make Karl Rove available for any further questioning on the matter beyond the grand jury room, this scenario raises a question. What did Karl say to get him out of the hang men's noose exactly regarding the sequencing of those emails? What might Libby have been able to say that might have hurt Rove's story? If they're unwilling to settle those questions, then they can't object to them being asked and to the speculation. Those questions and that speculation will always fill a void left by a secretive group of officials with a penchant for rule bending and breaking in virtually every sphere of their public lives.

Posted by MSB | July 6, 2007 11:07 AM

Wow, this post is about as delusional as the last post. I guess that's what happens in the fever swamps of the non-reality based community. So now, according to the left, lying under oath to protect against embarrassing disclosures is a jail-worthy crime. HAhahahaha!

The hypocrisy among the left wing these days is so ridiculous, it is laughable.

BTW, we see the Big Lie AGAIN here - Libby was not pardoned, no matter how many times the lying left wing repeat that lie.

Posted by Al | July 6, 2007 11:15 AM

Just to test the wild idea that Brendan Nyhan ha a brain in his head, I will put aside the established facts that: 1) someone at the CIA thought there was a crime and referred it to the DoJ 2)the Bush-appointed John Ashcroft thought the disclosure should be investigated, 3)the Bush-appointed, Guliani-trained, James Comey thought he needed a special prosecutor, 4)the Bush-appointed, Guliani-trained, US Attorney for the ND of Illinois, thought there was a crime, and 5) the US District Judge who heard all of the evidence found overwhelming evidence of a crime underlying the perjury charge.

Having put those facts aside, I can come to no logical reason to lie to the FBI and a Grand Jury except to avoid revealing non-criminal activity. What are they trying to say? That he lied for a stupid reason instead of a smart reason? "The man who ran looked a lot like me" but "I was in the arms of my best friend's wife" problem. It doesn't matter why he lied. He is guilty. Even Bush said he was guilty. So, if you want to say the pardon was justified because lying when there is no other crime is OK, at least tell us why he lied. And you can't, because Scooter Libby is a liar.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | July 6, 2007 11:20 AM

Al, I appreciate that these are desperate times for the right wing hackosphere. And as you've noted elsewhere, you don't have as much time to put into your hackery as you used to. But please, please, please don't serve up this embarrassingly weak hackiness. We remember you as the best there ever was. Please either bring your game back up to the level you used to regularly achieve, or else be silent and let us remember you as you once were.

Posted by grh | July 6, 2007 11:27 AM

Al's not even trying, these days. it must truly suck to be obligated to defending such a passel of cretins. i hope the pay's worth it.

Posted by cleek | July 6, 2007 11:36 AM

BTW - another aspect where Matthew is living in fantasyland is his statment that covering up embarrassing but not criminal conduct presents no case for leniency. Of course it does - which is why the Sentencing Guidelines treat perjury more harshly for covering up a crime than otherwise. So here, where there was no crime, Libby should certainly be treated more leniently than a case where the IIPA actually was violated. That's not to say there should be no punishment at all - there shoyld be. Like Clinton, the punishment for lying to cover up embarrassing non-crimes should be a big fine and loss of law license.

But where Matthew and others continue to lie and say Libby got pardoned, which is patently untrue, the fact that Libby is subject to a substantial punishment is obscured. Lying to cover embarrassing things should be punished - and it has been.

Posted by Al | July 6, 2007 12:01 PM

Al: Will you go on record (for whatever that's worth in this venue) that it would be an abuse of power for Bush to pardon Libby? Because I'd like to link to that in January '09 when Bush inevitably pardons him.

Posted by Led | July 6, 2007 12:06 PM

I don't think Libby should be pardoned, based on what I currently know about the case. I wouldn't call it an "abuse of power" to do so, though.

Posted by Al | July 6, 2007 12:16 PM

"based on what I currently know" and not an abuse of power.

What a weasel.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 6, 2007 12:22 PM

Let's be clear about something. There was never a question in the Clinton situation of an underlying crime. He gave a weasley answer to a question in a civil deposition. I've taken a couple of hundred civil depositions in my career and I would guess that in least half of these a witness has lied. It's not a pretty thought, but it happens rather regularly. It would never even occur to me to try and get someone prosecuted for such an offense.

Lying to a grand jury in a criminal investigation and obstructing justice, on the other hand, will get you slapped and slapped hard. When said lying occurs in the context of the outing of a covert agent in what appears to be a campaign orchestrated at the highest levels of government to intimidate and discredit a public critic, I'd say it's a rather serious matter.

Bush's actions are an abuse of his power and reek of hypocrisy given his unwillingness to show mercy on virtually every criminal who has ever sought clemency of some kind from him before.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | July 6, 2007 12:23 PM

Al, pay attention to grh, wouldya? i mean, speaking as one of your defenders, i'm embarassed for you that at 11:15 you raise the "pardon" issue that NO ONE had previously cited in this thread (matthew used the term "clemency" and i used the term "commute;" no one else used any such terms).

As for your 12:01, Al, truly: as a lawyer, you understand the difference between "lying" (what clinton did as far as most people are concerned, although actually thanks to the complicated defintion of sex being offered at the deposition, it's still not definitive in my mind) and "perjury" (must be material).

the correct punishment for lying under oath (let's just concede it for purposes of this discussion) in a non-material matter in a phony lawsuit was loss of license and a fine.

the correct punishment for perjury and obstruction of justice intended to keep an investigation of a possible violation of the IIPA and any related crimes from coming to a definitive conclusion is jail time.

and the correct terms for commuting a sentence while conceding the perjury are "incoherent" and "obstruction of justice."

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 12:29 PM

It's very hard to beleive that there is no underlying crime at the bottom of this somewhere. The notion that Plame was not covert has long since been demonstrated to be absurd, well beyond the bounds of good faith argument. Some of the leakers, such as Armitage evidently have plausible claims that they only ,knew that Plame worked for the CIA, and didn't know that she was covert. Somebody in the chain of information, however, must have known. Somebody passed on secret information without informing the recipients that it was secret.

Posted by rea | July 6, 2007 12:31 PM

Why is Al so happy that Scooter Libby, at his bosses' behest, leaked classified information which included the identity of an undercover CIA operative, thus destroying not only her career but the entire network of overseas operatives she had spent years putting together?

Riddle me this, Al and other like-minded trolls:

1) Valerie Plame's CIA network was tasked with determining whether Saddam really had any usable WMD left from the stockpiles Rumsfeld and Cheney gave him during the Reagan Era. After her cover was blown, she had to drop contact with her field operatives in Iraq. How long do you think any of her Iraqi informants survived once it became known they were working for the CIA?

2) If Dick Cheney is allowed, in a fit of pique, to send his gunsels out to destroy intelligence operatives and their field networks with impunity, what's the incentive for anyone to either join the CIA or to work with it?

3) The reason Bush "commuted" a sentence which Libby hadn't even started serving was to keep Scooter's ability to plead the Fifth intact. A full pardon would remove any chance of peril from self-incrimination, thus removing any barrier to Scooter's telling the truth under oath about how he came to out Valerie Plame. (Remember, he already tried lying under oath and got caught at it, so he wouldn't try that again.) So long as Scooter can plead the Fifth, he can't be forced to testify against Bush and Cheney. It's really that simple.

Posted by Phoenix Woman | July 6, 2007 12:31 PM

Klein's tiny left nut, just to take your point about clinton and "underlying" one step further: the jones lawsuit was so weak that the judge dismissed the case altogether, putting aside that the question of monica lewinsky was completely irrelevant to the jones lawsuit.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 12:33 PM

Let's be clear about something. There was never a question in the Clinton situation of an underlying crime. He gave a weasley answer to a question in a civil deposition. I've taken a couple of hundred civil depositions in my career and I would guess that in least half of these a witness has lied. It's not a pretty thought, but it happens rather regularly. It would never even occur to me to try and get someone prosecuted for such an offense.
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On November 13, 1998, Clinton settled with Jones for $850,000, the entire amount of her claim, but without an apology, in exchange for her agreement to drop the appeal. All but $151,000 went to pay, what were by then, considerable legal expenses. Before the end of the entire litigation, her marriage broke apart.

In April 1999, Judge Wright found President Clinton in civil contempt of court for misleading testimony in the Jones case. She ordered Clinton to pay Jones $91,000 for the expenses incurred as the result of Clinton's evasive and misleading answers. [4] Wright then referred Clinton's conduct to the Arkansas Bar for disciplinary action, and on January 19, 2001, the day before President Clinton left the White House, Clinton entered into an agreement with the Arkansas Bar and Independent Counsel Robert Ray under which Clinton consented to a five-year suspension of his law license. [5]

With the adducement of further evidence in the case President Clinton was held in contempt of court by judge Susan Webber Wright[6]. His license to practice law was suspended in Arkansas and later by the United States Supreme Court [7]. He was also fined $90,000 [8]. His fine was paid for by a legal fund raised for his legal expenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Jones
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No crime, no offense, nothing there

Posted by Campesino | July 6, 2007 12:33 PM

actually, rea, let's just, for a moment, play at occam's razor and assume that the "somebody" was dick cheney; per the bush administration's discovery of an ability by the president or vice president to instantaneously declassify material, i suspect that would be the defense if libby, after a day in jail to clarify his thinking, actually told the (what i'm assuming to be) truth.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 12:36 PM

It all comes down to Libby's motives for lying. We still don't know why he lied.

He could have stuck a deal with the prosecutors confessing his reasons for lying and getting a lighter sentence. He chose not to do that. He also has not said anything about his reasons for lying.

Remember Armitage/Fleisher/Rove were not indicted. We have to assume the prosecutor was satisfied that they were not lying. Rove even went in to testify several times because he wanted to "clarify". Libby never did any of that. He lied and he must have had a reason to lie.

Posted by DonB | July 6, 2007 12:38 PM

campesino, nice cherry-picking, right up to your usual standard.

here's what you left out: judge wright threw the jones lawsuit out. indeed, it was so weak a case that judge wright concluded that even if paula jones account of her visit to clinton's hotel room were true, it nonetheless didn't constitute anything more than boorish conduct, since jones could adduce zero (0) evidence supporting any notion of harassment.

once judge wright became aware that clinton had (let's just call it) lied in his deposition, she felt she had no choice but to reopen the case. At that point, clinton concluded that life is too frickin' short and the opportunity cost too high, to continue on down this path.

in short, yes, no "underlying" crime, which is a stupid, stupid argument anyhow: you swear an oath and you aren't supposed to lie no matter what.

PS. i'm sure, campesino, worked up as you are about this phony matter, that you certainly took it to heart that bill gates, one of the smartest people in the entire business world, played dumb in his deposition on the microsoft antitrust suit. you want perjury? it was right there, but sane prosecutors thought the way that klein's tiny left nut does and didn't pursue it. i know you've been outraged ever since....

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 12:42 PM

Kleins Tiny Left Nut is exactly right about perjury in civil case. The fact is you want the little weasles to lie in the deposition so that you can embarass them with the truth at trial.

A criminal case is something completely different. Libby lied to the FBI. He lied to a Grand Jury. Both of these are investigating entities whose role is to determine if there is cause to believe a crime occurred. In this case, the Grand Jury determined that they could not complete their investigation because Scooter Libby lied to them. They and we do not know why he lied. I have my ideas, KTLN has his, Al may have, if not ideas at least something. He may have lied for a trivial reason. Maybe he didn't want his wife to find out about him and Judy and the aspens, who knows. If so, he should advise us of that reason. Then maybe we wouldn't be so upset with him.

Of course, another fact is that Scooter Libby is a liar. So we probably wouldn't believe him anyway. I hope he gets to share an office at AEI with his old mentor, Paul Wolfowitz.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | July 6, 2007 12:43 PM

Howard, read Matthew's post again. Matthew said, more than once, that Libby was pardoned. Which is just a Big Lie. (I'd be interested to know whether the continual repition of the Big Lie, intended to cause the public to misapprehend what Bush did, is having that effect on the public.)

As for the rest of your post, no, there was no violation of the IIPA - no underlying crime whatsoever. In that, it is quite similar to the Clinton lie, and should be punished similarly.

Posted by Al | July 6, 2007 12:48 PM

Al, when you're right, you're right: i missed matthew's use of the term "pardon" in his second graf.

and when you're wrong, you're wrong, which is everything else.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 12:53 PM

As a criminal lawyer, I have learned that it is a trite notion that people lie to avoid consequences. As a result, there is a cost-benefit analysis anyone undertakes before lying: are the consequences of getting caught lying more serious than the consequences arising from telling the truth?

That is why it isn't uncommon for someone to lie when they aren't under oath. For Ari Fletcher to stand at the lectern and lie to the press is of no great consequence - it has actually come to be expected.

The whole point of administering an oath to a witness is to bring home the consequences of telling a lie. That is why the oath is invoked in court, and why many witnesses come clean under oath when they may have previously lied outside of court.

For Libby to continue to lie to investigators, and then the grand jury, suggests that the consequences of telling the truth were more serious than lying. It suggests he was covering something up - and given the criminal consequences of lying - suggests that the cover up was of *another* crime.

Is this the only conclusion? No. Is it the most likely one? You bet.

Posted by 3pointshooter | July 6, 2007 12:55 PM

no, there was no violation of the IIPA

prove it.

no underlying crime whatsoever

prove it.

Posted by cleek | July 6, 2007 12:57 PM

Still waiting for Al to explain why it's OK for the Bush White House to destroy a CIA operative and her network because her hubby pissed them off.

Posted by Phoenix Woman | July 6, 2007 12:58 PM

campesino, nice cherry-picking, right up to your usual standard.

here's what you left out: judge wright threw the jones lawsuit out. indeed, it was so weak a case that judge wright concluded that even if paula jones account of her visit to clinton's hotel room were true, it nonetheless didn't constitute anything more than boorish conduct, since jones could adduce zero (0) evidence supporting any notion of harassment.

once judge wright became aware that clinton had (let's just call it) lied in his deposition, she felt she had no choice but to reopen the case. At that point, clinton concluded that life is too frickin' short and the opportunity cost too high, to continue on down this path.

in short, yes, no "underlying" crime, which is a stupid, stupid argument anyhow: you swear an oath and you aren't supposed to lie no matter what.
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Wright didn't reopen the case - it was up on appeal and indications from the judges were they were going to accept it. Clinton settled to cut that off - to get on with life you know.

But the statement: "Let's be clear about something. There was never a question in the Clinton situation of an underlying crime." is quite weaselly, depending on what you think of sexual harrassment.

Posted by Campesino | July 6, 2007 1:09 PM

campesino, i may be misremembering judge wright vs. the appeal, but the fact remains: there was no evidence of sexual harassment. judge wright's ruling was dispositive.

so what i think of sexual harassment is neither here nor there in this case, since it didn't occur.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 1:13 PM

Bush and Cheney are entitled to no political presumption of innocence. Are you suggesting they actually face a criminal trial?

Posted by phil | July 6, 2007 1:30 PM

Campesino,

Perhaps you might want to familiarize yourself with the civil versus criminal distinction before popping off. There is nothing weaselly about the difference. One will cost you money, the other your freedom.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | July 6, 2007 1:39 PM

This has long been Nyhan's schtick, this is currently his schtick, it will always be his schtick.

Why play with this guy?

Posted by jerry | July 6, 2007 2:02 PM

Oh come on, Phoenix Woman. There was no harm to Plame's "network" or US security. The CIA never gave us any assessment there was, and neither did Fitz. That idea is simply created out of whole cloth - just like they idea expressed yesterday's thread the Libby lied to coceal Cheney's involvement, when the truth is that Libby told the GJ that Cheney told him about Plame.

Posted by Al | July 6, 2007 2:12 PM

campesino, i may be misremembering judge wright vs. the appeal, but the fact remains: there was no evidence of sexual harassment. judge wright's ruling was dispositive.

so what i think of sexual harassment is neither here nor there in this case, since it didn't occur.

Posted by howard | July 6, 2007 1:13 PM
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If the ruling was so dispositive why did Clinton settle? The Appeals court could just as easily have found against him.

Now we'll never know, just Bill's account (that he was punished for lying about) against Paula's

Posted by Campesino | July 6, 2007 2:15 PM

What could possibly be the "embarrassing but non-criminal conduct" Libby was covering up? There are no family or privacy issues implicated here. No sex, drugs, or rock and roll. This is a dry case about government policy. The idea that the behavior was simply embarrassing rather than criminal is not plausible.

Posted by JP | July 6, 2007 2:19 PM

Campesino,

Again, your ignorance of litigation is palpable. People settle cases in which they are not liable for reasons having to do with costs, publicity, inconvenience, embarrassment, risk management, etc. Litigation is a rather expensive hobby and one in which results are rarely guaranteed.

If it is going to cost you $500,000 to litigate a case and you may lose (even a small chance of loss), it may well be worth paying someone $850,000 to make the case go away.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | July 6, 2007 2:38 PM

Bush and Cheney are, however, clearly entitled to a legal presumption of innocence.

Incorrect.

Should Bush and/or Cheney actually be indicted, then they would be entitled to a presumption of innocence for purposes of their trial ( but not for other purposes, such as their bail hearing ).

Of course, the set of presumptions that we should apply for purposes of whether a person should be convicted of a crime and those we should apply for purposes of whether he should hold the highest office in the land should differ. "I am not a crook," is hardly a credential one wants to put on one's resume.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 6, 2007 2:40 PM

Gotta love Al yacking about "the big lie" while deliberately misrepresenting the Clinton situation so enthusiastically. Of course, he's got a talent for these things.

It's really not that complicated. Libby was found guilty by a jury and sentenced by a judge for perjury and obstruction of justice. In other words, he lost his case. And in the words of both the jurors and the judge, it was not close.

Clinton was never charged by the DOJ or a state prosecutor with a crime, was never found guilty by a jury, was never sentenced by a judge, and impeachment proceedings against him were unsuccessful. In other words, he won his case.

And really, that's the problem with comparisons. The situations actually have to be similar for the comparison to work. George Bush Sr's pardon of the Iran Contra actors is a much better comparison for Libby. I suggest you try that one on for size instead.

Posted by owenz | July 6, 2007 3:04 PM

I left comment below on Nyhan's website, which gets to the bottom line for me. If you want to assume or not assume an underlying crime, what is the difference in this case? It seemed to make no difference regarding the use of impeachment in thse kinds of cases that Madison's discussed at the constitutional convention. See Froomkin earlier this week or emptywheel's post on firedoglake today for references to Madision'comments on impeachment for the Libby commutation.

Nyhan is micro-quibbling over a minor side issue. Is he a new Mickey Kause in training? Soon he will be running Youtube clips in slo-mo and backwards looking for 'signs'.

"So, are you suggesting it is OK for people to lie to police and grand juries about suspected criminal acts, just because their testimony might be embarrassing? Libby may have foiled an investigation into a crime. Of course we don’t know in fact whether there was an underlying crime: whether one occurred or not was precisely what was bring investigated. One of the reasons we don’t know is precisely because Libby lied. What is so difficult about that? If your reasoning were adopted the criminal justice system would grind to a halt. Suppose you were mugged, and I were a witness, and I decided to lie about it because I was in an embarrassing situation when it happened. Would you feel that my actions were OK?"

Posted by categorical imperative | July 6, 2007 3:20 PM

Campesino,

Again, your ignorance of litigation is palpable. People settle cases in which they are not liable for reasons having to do with costs, publicity, inconvenience, embarrassment, risk management, etc. Litigation is a rather expensive hobby and one in which results are rarely guaranteed.

If it is going to cost you $500,000 to litigate a case and you may lose (even a small chance of loss), it may well be worth paying someone $850,000 to make the case go away.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | July 6, 2007 2:38 PM
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Your arrogance is palpable.

I'm fully cognicent of why there are often cost/benefit reasons to settle suits. I was merely smashing Howard's silly assertion that Judge Wright's ruling had completely settled the matter of whether Jones was harrassed or not. The arc of litigation was interrupted and now we will never know.

I continue to find it hilarious that you and others here continue to assert that there is a HUGE moral difference between Clinton's discipline and fines for egregious lying to the court and Libby's conviction because one was a civil case and the other a criminal case.
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Perhaps you might want to familiarize yourself with the civil versus criminal distinction before popping off. There is nothing weaselly about the difference. One will cost you money, the other your freedom.
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Not necessarily - if Clinton hadn't paid his fines he could have been sentenced for contempt.

Posted by Campesino | July 6, 2007 3:20 PM

Charles Pierce, over at Altercation, has what I think is a perfect pitch take on this matter. Check it out.

Posted by milo | July 6, 2007 3:24 PM

Firedoglake post mentioned above that explains why whether assuming or not assuming that an underlying crime really occuered is a micro-quibble over a minor side issue. Be sure to link through to Washington Post primer on impeachment (if they don't take it down, now that the arguments works against the editors this time)

Obstruction of Justice Merits More Punishment than Censure
By emptywheel on Fri Jul 6, 2007 at 07:05 am

http://www.firedoglake.com/index.php?author=63

Posted by categorical imperative | July 6, 2007 3:31 PM

"the truth is that Libby told the GJ that Cheney told him about Plame."

Yes, Libby said Cheney mentioned it in June 2003 (a month BEFORE the Joe Wilson editorial). But Libby also testified that he forgot what Cheney told him and that he re-learned the Plame info from Russert a month later, shortly after the Wilson editorial. The key is what happened in the aftermath of the Wilson editorial. Did Cheney tell Libby to leak Plame's involvement to discredit Wilson or did Libby do it on his own? Did either Cheney or Libby know Plame was covert at the time? By portraying himself (falsely) as simply relaying media gossip, Libby prevented Fitz from learning the answer to those questions.

Posted by Led | July 6, 2007 3:43 PM

Most importantly

At the time of Clinton's impeachment hearing in the Senate - roughly equivalent to when Libby went on trial - Clinton had fessed up!

When Libby stops lying, and he convinces people that he was in fact lying to protect himself from a purely personal embarassment (with no relevance to his job functions), then leniency might be appropriate. BUT Libby hasn't fessed up. No one really knows why Libby is lying. Hence its utterly innapropriate to compare his situation to President Clinton's.

Posted by TomTom | July 6, 2007 3:56 PM

"Bush and Cheney are, however, clearly entitled to a legal presumption of innocence"

As Duncan implied above, if and when I sit on their jury, I will be obliged to give them a presumption of innocence. Otherwise, I am under no such obligation whatsoever. I can presume any damn thing I want. (And I presume them to be guilty as hell.)

Posted by Robert Earle | July 6, 2007 4:03 PM

My god, but Nyhan's a prick. That pseudo-moderate concern business must pay pretty well, though, or he would've stopped doing it by now. Maybe when Broder retires, Nyhan can start churning out his hand-wringing pearl-clutching bullshit for *real* money, for the Post.

Assuming that Libby would've risked jail - on multiple felony counts, no less - to cover up something that *wasn't* *even* *illegal* isn't just at *least* a leap of logic as great as assuming there was some fire behind the smokescreen; it's utterly fucking stupid.

And to complain about liberals assuming bad motives on the part of this administration is just asinine. Right. Because *nobody* could have imagined that these guys would fuck anything up, intentionally or by accident, or that after six years of watching trainwrecks as public policy, we'd be entitled to a little skepticism about what conservatives tell us. No, let's all stick our pretty little heads in the sand and hope for the best.

Posted by Chris | July 6, 2007 4:44 PM

From firedoglake post mentioned above:

"James Madison responded: [I]f the President be connected, in **any suspicious manner**, with any person, and there be **grounds to believe** he **will shelter him**, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

emphases added.

Note that Madison did not say that if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that a crime was commited, even without a legal trial (in other words, using the Bill Clinton rules of the '90s) then there would be grounds for sanctions or criticism. No, Madison said "any suspicious manner" and "grounds to believe" and "will shelter him." He didn't say "somehow you know that the President DID in fact shelter him, committing a criminal act thereby, that you know somehow without a trial anyway" (that is, as we did under the Bill Clinton rules of the '90s).

And that is not just a slip of the tongue by Madison just that once. Regarding abuse of the appointment power, either Madison or Hamilton said that appointing "obsequious instruments" of the "president's will" as grounds for sanctions, perhaps impeachment. Didn't say, "somehow, magically, we know that some crime was committed using the appointment power, even though there was no trial." So this whole business of whether there really was a crime that we can somehow divine magically, or not, or what Libby's intentions were, and all this is just junk. And IMO that is straight from the mouths of the founders. Whether criminal investigation was foiled because some guy lied in order not to be embarassed, or some other reason or whatever, is irrelevant here.

The very idea that somehow one could know whether or not a crime was committed without due process and a trial is weird, to begin with. So the idea that we have to know, or it is important, to worry about legally defined crimes when considering criticism or sanctions for political crimes against the constitution is not in accordance with Hamilton's attitude toward sanctions and impeachment. A lot of people are mouthing pure nonsense these days.

Posted by categorical imperative | July 6, 2007 5:04 PM

I think that it's patently absurd to think that Libby would lie to spare the president and vice-president some embarrassment. Does anybody seriously think that Libby would put himself through a trial, risk prison and the loss of his license to practice law, in order to prevent his bosses from being embarrassed? That makes no sense at all. Nice try, though.

Posted by Susan | July 7, 2007 7:12 AM