"...Had the president wanted to placate the Weekly Standard crowd, he would have given Mr. Libby a full pardon. That he served up a commutation instead is revealing of just how worried the president is about the beans Mr. Libby could spill about his and Dick Cheney's use of prewar intelligence.
Valerie Wilson has a suit pending. The Democratic inquisitor in the House, Henry Waxman, still has the uranium hoax underlying this case at the top of his agenda as an active investigation. A commutation puts up more roadblocks by keeping Mr. Libby's appeal of his conviction alive and his Fifth Amendment rights intact. He can't testify without risking self-incrimination. Meanwhile, we are asked to believe that he has paid his remaining $250,000 debt to society independently of his private $5 million "legal defense fund." —from Frank Rich's July 8, 2007 Sunday NY Times Op Ed piece "A Profile in Cowardice"
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I have been hearing this argument on a lot of fronts, and jumped right on the bandwagon myself. Then I heard John Dean interviewed by Keith Olbermann, where Keith was force-feeding it to Dean to get the same result. However, Dean correctly pointed out that if the Senate or the House really wants to force this guy to testify, all they have to do is give him immunity, in which case it makes no difference whether his appeal is still pending or whatever. If he is immunized, he cannot take the 5th and MUST testify. And, as Dean points out, with his sentence already commuted and his fine paid, who gives a shit whether he gets immunity at this point?! I say, call or write your Senator or Congressman, and demand that they immunize this smirking little punk and make him tell us how Darth Cheney and Adolf Bush put him up to his nefarious doings.
~ Tom
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