Right now I'm listening to Russert with a couple. He is the perfect defender for Hillary. Just enough cred to head off any serious questioning, and he knows Hillary refuses tough interviews or to answer questions so things just go away. I wonder who the next Democrat to host MTP will be. Chelsea Clinton?

I heard Bush could commute Libby's prison sentence without pardoning him. I think it was William Kristol. It's a half-measure a lot of people might not like, but considering the sentence it seemed like a fair thing to do, considering nobody else has been convicted on any underlying crime.

You'll notice Russert confines himself to the disputed quotes. Were they really the most newsworthy feature of the book?

What else did they say that is controversial?

name='Davis 2.0' date='Jun 14 2007, 03:50 PM' post='308132']
Judge won't delay Libby prison term

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 48 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the CIA leak case, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's decision will send Libby's attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby's supporters to pardon the former aide.

Why do you think that? He's a Republican and a Bush appointee. He's not a Clintonista either.

Another New Tone fumble - this judge was a black "plantation guy" (if you have listened and read) appointed by BJ during a recess of Congress and GWB, because he was black, reappointed and of course he was approved. So many of the black appointments are not good images for the hard working accomplished black citizens, i.e., the $50,000 pr. of pants judge in the news also. Thomas Sowell calls them democrat plantation appointments.

"Thomas Sowell (born 1930) is noted for his conservative views on social and economic issues. An African American author and economist, Sowell opposes such programs as affirmative action, busing, racial quotas, minimum wage, and welfare. He has drawn fire from liberals and a number of African Americanleaders, while generating applause from fellow conservatives."

It is quite obvious that Walton wants to get his points in by not allowing the appeal to come before incarceration.

Judge Reggie B. Walton assumed his position as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia on October 29, 2001, after being nominated to the position by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate.

In May 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Walton to serve as a Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is a 7-year appointment. Judge Walton was also appointed by President Bush in June of 2004 to serve as the Chairperson of the National Prison Rape Reduction Commission, a two-year commission created by the United States Congress that is tasked with the mission of identifying methods to curb the incidents of prison rape.

Former Chief Justice Rehnquist appointed Judge Walton to the federal judiciary's Criminal Law Committee, effective October 1, 2005. Judge Walton previously served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and 1991 to 2001, having been appointed to that position by Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George H. W. Bush in 1991.

While serving on the Superior Court, Judge Walton was the court's Presiding Judge of the Family Division, Presiding Judge of the Domestic Violence Unit and Deputy Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division. Between 1989 and 1991, Judge Walton served as President George H. W. Bush's Associate Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President and as President Bush's Senior White House Advisor for Crime....

A Bush permanent appointment but a Clintonista mole!

WASHINGTON — Years ago, when campaigns were drowning in political rhetoric on the crime issue, I got The Washington Post to reassign me temporarily to the District of Columbia courthouse so I could learn from front-line law enforcement people what worked — and what didn’t — to keep the streets safe.

One of my mentors was Reggie Walton, then a trial court judge in the District, later elevated to the federal bench, and now in the news as the man who presided over I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s trial and last week sentenced Vice President Cheney’s former top aide to 30 months in prison.

Walton was — and is — no coddler of criminals. But as I heard him tell many a defendant who stood before him in the old days, his guiding principle is always to teach a lesson about the consequences of life choices. Growing up, Walton himself had plenty of temptations to live on the other side of the law. After he became a judge, he spent countless hours visiting schools in the blighted neighborhoods of Washington, telling teenagers the vital importance of building internal defenses against the lures of “the easy way.” When he had first-time offenders in front of him for sentencing, he regularly spurned their pleas for probation, telling them that they had to understand the seriousness of their crimes — and that he hoped their time in jail would give them the opportunity to ponder that lesson.

Now, many conservatives are up in arms about Walton “throwing the book” at Libby. Part of their criticism is based on their belief that Libby’s long and effective government service — attested to by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a host of other worthies — should mitigate whatever errors in judgment he made in this case.

Their bigger complaint is that the White House official’s conviction on felony counts of lying and obstruction of justice was a byproduct of a “leak” investigation that itself was unnecessary.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned soon after taking the job that Richard Armitage, a high State Department official, and presidential assistant Karl Rove were the sources columnist Robert Novak used in identifying CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson’s role in her husband’s covert mission that ultimately challenged the Bush administration’s rationale for war with Iraq.

Armitage made his confession immediately, and Rove — after repeated trips to the grand jury — told a version of his own story that persuaded Fitzgerald not to indict him.

Despite the absence of any underlying crime, Fitzgerald filed charges against Libby for denying to the FBI and the grand jury that he had discussed the Wilson case with reporters. Libby was convicted on the testimony of reporters from NBC, The New York Times and Time magazine — a further provocation to conservatives....



Nonetheless, on the fundamental point, Walton and Fitzgerald have it right. Libby let his loyalty to his boss and to the administration cloud his judgment — and perhaps his memory — in denying that he was part of the effort to discredit the Wilson pair. Lying to a grand jury is serious business, especially when it is done by a person occupying a high government position where the public trust is at stake.

Knowing Judge Walton a bit, I was certain that he would never be party to allowing a big shot to get off more easily than any of the two-bit bad guys who used to show up in his courtroom for sentencing. When he goes to his next school session, he wants to be able to tell those young people that “no one is above the law,” and mean it. You see, Walton is not just in the business of enforcing the law. He is also committed to steering youths in the right direction. This case will help.

BRODER: . . . This first letter from Minnesota challenges the conventional wisdom by asserting that the country overwhelmingly supports the liberal agenda, both at home and abroad. I have to disagree. I think the country is closely balanced, with a controlling group in the center that rejects extreme positions and seeks practical solutions drawn from the agendas of both liberals and conservatives. Most Americans I meet are not ideologues of any sort; they are practical people seeking practical solutions to real challenges.

Broder Is Not a Liberal But Plays One On TV (none / 0) (#6)
by john horse on Fri May 04, 2007 at 05:51:54 PM EST
Given all the ways Bush has screwed the country over I keep waiting for Broder to say about Bush something like what he said about Clinton "He trashed the place up".

Instead time after time Broder keeps giving Bush a free pass.

Eric Alterman was right about the mainstream media. There is a bias in the press against liberals rather than in their favor. Take David Broder for example. He long ago stopped being a liberal yet he plays one on

Some commentary on Broder, that shows the feeling of entitlement the left has over the media.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/4/17317/33720
tv.

BS.

Broder is right.

No it's quite obvious you're a bigot.

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/walton-bio.html

IOW you're a bigoted idiot.

Liberal, not leftist. The folks at talk-left are probably out in the left field parking lot as opposed to somebody like Broder. They feel betrayed if the media doesn't toe a line.

RR got the ball rolling and GHWB also advanced him and then Clinton made the recess, temporary appointment (not included in his bio) to the court he now sits on and GWB made the permanent appointment which was then passed by the senate.

GHWB also advanced him

\

You're wrong and your bigotry shines thru.

\

...this judge was a black "plantation guy"....

Op-Ed Columnist
TimesSelect

Scooter’s Sopranos Go to the Mattresses


By FRANK RICH
Published: June 17, 2007

AS a weary nation awaited the fade-out of "The Sopranos" last Sunday, the widow of the actual Mafia don John Gotti visited his tomb in Queens to observe the fifth anniversary of his death. Victoria Gotti was not pleased to find reporters lying in wait.


"It's disgusting that people are still obsessed with Gotti and the mob," she told The Daily News. "They should be obsessed with that mob in Washington. They have 3,000 deaths on their hands." She demanded to know if the president and vice president have relatives on the front lines. "Every time I watch the news and I hear of another death," she said, "it sickens me."

Far be it from me to cross any member of the Gotti family, but there's nothing wrong with being obsessed with both mobs. Now that the approval rating for the entire Washington franchise, the president and Congress alike, has plummeted into the 20s, we need any distraction we can get; the Mafia is a welcome nostalgic escape from a gridlocked government at home and epic violence abroad.

But unlikely moral arbiter that Mrs. Gotti may be, she does have a point. As the Iraq war careens toward a denouement as black, unresolved and terrifying as David Chase's inspired "Sopranos" finale, the mob in the capital deserves at least equal attention. John Gotti, the last don, is dead. Mr. Chase's series is over. But the deaths on the nightly news are coming as fast as ever.

True, the Washington mob isn't as sexy as the Gotti or Soprano clans, but there is now a gripping nonfiction dramatization of its machinations available gratis on the Internet, no HBO subscription required. For this we can thank U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Scooter Libby trial. Judge Walton's greatest move was not the 30-month sentence he gave Mr. Libby, a fall guy for higher-ups (and certain to be pardoned to protect their secrets). It was instead the judge's decision to make public the testimonials written to the court by members of the Washington establishment pleading that a criminal convicted on four felony counts be set free.

Mr. Libby's lawyers argued that these letters should remain locked away on the hilarious grounds that they might be "discussed, even mocked, by bloggers." And apparently many of the correspondents assumed that their missives would remain private, just like all other documents pertaining to Mr. Libby's former boss, Dick Cheney. The result is very little self-censorship among the authors and an epistolary gold mine for readers.

Among those contributing to the 373 pages of what thesmokinggun.com calls "Scooter Libby Love Letters" are self-identified liberals and Democrats, a few journalists (including a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) and a goodly sample of those who presided over the Iraq catastrophe or cheered it on. This is a documentary snapshot of the elite Washington mob of our time.

Like the scripts for "The Sopranos," the letters are not without mordant laughs. Henry Kissinger writes a perfunctory two paragraphs, of which the one about Mr. Libby rather than himself seems an afterthought. James Carville co-signs a letter by Mary Matalin tediously detailing Mr. Libby's devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an "undisclosed location." One correspondent writes in astonishment that Mr. Libby once helped "a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat" dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Mr. Libby would "personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife." Many praise Mr. Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.

But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon." Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime — and I don't mean only Americans — who didn't see himself as saving the world from the enemy?

The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson's identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).

Much has been said about the hypocrisy of those on the right, champions both of Bill Clinton's impeachment and of unflinching immigration enforcement, who call for legal amnesty in Mr. Libby's case. To thicken their exquisite bind, these selective sticklers for strict justice have been foiled in their usual drill of attacking the judge in the case as "liberal." Judge Walton was initially appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and was elevated to his present job by the current President Bush; he was assigned as well to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the Bush-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. Such credentials notwithstanding, Judge Walton told the court on Thursday that he was alarmed by new correspondence and phone calls from the Libby mob since the sentencing "wishing bad things" on him and his family.

In Washington, however, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in both parties; if all the city's hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government. What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn't on these letter writers' radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn't addressed (unless it's ascribed to memory loss because Mr. Libby was so darn busy saving the world). Given that Mr. Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you'd think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there's been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.

Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Mr. Libby is a victim, suffering "permanent damage" to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a "cakewalk" for America in Iraq. There's a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too. In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend's case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that "during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation," Mr. Libby "was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi Army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient."

History will prove no such thing; a "rapid" buildup of the Iraqi Army was and is a mirage, and the neocons' chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Mr. Wolfowitz's real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons' chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Mr. Bremer's incompetent execution of the American occupation.

Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphere and beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and war proponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive) "contagion effect" on the region and that Americans would be greeted "in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes." (I guess it all depends on your definition of "boom boxes.") In an open letter to President Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Judge Walton, likening Mr. Libby to a "fallen soldier" in the Iraq war. In Mr. Ajami's view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Mr. Libby's) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and "the 'covertness' of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established." (The C.I.A. confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)

Mr. Ajami notes, accurately, that the trial was "about the Iraq war and its legitimacy" — an argument that could also be mustered by defenders of Alger Hiss who felt his perjury trial was about the cold war. But it's even more revealing that the only "casualty of a war" Mr. Ajami's conscience prompts him to mention is Mr. Libby, a figurative casualty rather than a literal one.

No wonder Victoria Gotti denigrated "that mob in Washington." When the godfathers of this war speak of never leaving "a fallen comrade" on the battlefield in Iraq, as Mr. Ajami writes of Mr. Libby, they are speaking first and foremost of one another. The soldiers still making the ultimate sacrifice for this gang's hubristic folly will just have to fend for themselves

The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson's identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).

WASHINGTON -- The argument among Republicans over whether President Bush should grant Scooter Libby a quick pardon amounts to a battle between the past and the future.


The Republicans most eager to end the Libby case immediately are those who were most deeply invested in the Iraq War and were willing to do whatever was expedient to commit American troops to a venture they were certain would turn out well.


The Libby case put their generation on trial, to use Alistair Cooke's evocative phrase about a very different trial in an earlier age. The verdict against Libby was a verdict against them.


The Republicans with the gravest doubts are those who worry about the damage a pardon would cause their party by undercutting its oft-stated commitment to the rule of law.


Attitudes toward a pardon thus do not break down neatly along ideological lines. In the recent Republican presidential debate, for example, James Gilmore, the former Virginia governor and a down-the-line conservative, offered a flat ``no'' when asked if he would pardon Libby. ``I'm steeped in the law. I wouldn't do that,'' he added.


Gilmore elaborated on this view in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. ``If the public believes there's one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system,'' he said.


But for those who advocated hard for the war, what matters is that Libby loyally did all he could to advance the effort and push back against its critics.


It was thus not surprising that one of the most ferocious calls for an immediate pardon came from William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard who was one of the staunchest supporters of the Iraq invasion.


Responding to a White House statement that the president was, for the moment, declining to intervene in the case, Kristol declared: ``For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage -- well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?''


Kristol's sharpness underscored the tribulations that Bush will face if Libby is required to go to prison while his appeal is pending. If Bush blocks prison time for Libby, either through a pardon or by commuting his sentence, the action would amount to the repudiation of a jury verdict -- and also of the decisions of federal Judge Reginald Walton, one of the president's appointees. Commuting Libby's sentence would not, as some have suggested, be a happy compromise because doing so would still involve setting aside a formal punishment on behalf of an administration favorite.


Yet if Bush allows Libby to go to prison, he will alienate his dwindling band of supporters, particularly those most vociferous in standing up for the administration's Iraq policies.


The Republican presidential candidates have two time frames: their need to win conservative support in the nomination battle now, and the general election imperative to break with what is looking like a discredited presidency. Taking a stand on a pardon forces an awkward and immediate choice between those objectives.....






Fred Thompson, whom many conservatives hope will enter the race, has been a leader of Libby's legal defense fund. Perhaps ironically for the man who plays a prosecutor on ``Law & Order,'' Thompson has unequivocally endorsed a pardon.


Thompson's clarity may pressure other Republicans to support a pardon -- Giuliani seemed almost there during the debate -- but their decisions would come at a high cost. At times, a single legal case can come to embody an entire controversy, even an entire era. To support pardoning Scooter Libby has come to mean endorsing an approach to politics and a way of governing that most Americans have come to reject.

davis, I think LP honestly doesn't recognize himself as a bigot.

Riiiiiiight.

You have no evidence the judge is a Dem, bone-brain.

No evidence a Clinton appointee - because Bushie appointed him.

You have no ability to admit you're wrong. That's a bad trait.

Instead you cloak yourself in bigoted babble.

Aaaaaamen. Can I get an aaaaamen from the evangelicals?
I didn't think so.

I the USA, the "world of the poor" is a "voluntary community" where the gates are always open for people to leave and enter into a better world should they choose to do so.

Hunin, I suspect you have always lived in a world of "IL Academe atmospheric phenomena" with many of the laughing-boy type around you to insulate you from the real world. Right?

Why don't you put a sock in it, you senile mother f arker?

I said from the start Reps are stupid to talk to Russert. They should boycott his ass like Dems do Fox. But media hog pols just can't help themselves.

The more lies I hear from Scooter's supporters, the less I'm inclined to see him pardoned.

The pardon movement has turned into a denial of the crime itself as Hitch does above.
That I won't support.

If Scooter Libby goes to jail, it will be because he made a telephone call to Tim Russert and because Tim Russert has a different recollection of the conversation.

And we're supposed to buy it.