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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (55580)	4/3/2007 1:02:05 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 59480

The right thing to do By Jack Kemp Tuesday, April 3, 2007 Email It Print It Take Action Read Article & Comments (0) Trackbacks Post Your Comments "I would like him to get one (a pardon)." "We didn't vote to put him away." "I don't want him to go to jail." Ann Redington, juror on Libby trial, on "Hardball", March 7 - - - Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby walks past a line of photographers as he prepares to give a news conference outside federal court in Washington, Tuesday, March 6, 2007, after the jury reached its guilty verdict in Libby's perjury trial. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) Ann Redington, a juror in the I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby trial has weighed in for a pardon for Libby. Another juror, Denis Collins, expressed similar sentiments when he was interviewed by friend and liberal columnist Maureen Dowd. "I asked him how he would feel if W. pardons Scooter," Dowd wrote, "'I would really not care,' he replied." If even two jurors are endorsing a pardon, the president should not hesitate to take them up on their recommendation and pardon Libby immediately. It's the right thing to do and it's the right thing to do now - anything less makes a travesty of our system of justice. As columnist Mark Steyn said about Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's closing argument: "When a prosecutor speaks about 'a cloud over the vice president's office' and 'a cloud over the White House,' he is speaking politically." The criminalization of this political fight should end. Democrat super lawyer David Boies has joined the bipartisan chorus of those saying that Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby when there was no underlying criminal violation at issue. Presidents of both parties have used the pardon power to grant clemency to former government officials who were prosecuted - most often by independent counsels - for conduct that most likely would not have been criminalized but for political considerations. President Bush can look to the history of both his father and President Bill Clinton for examples of similar pardons. When President George H.W. Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger and a number of other individuals in connection with Iran-Contra matters, he wrote: "The prosecutions of the individuals I am pardoning represent what I believe is a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences. These differences should be addressed in the political arena, without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of some of the combatants. The proper target is the President, not his subordinates; the proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom. In recent years, the use of criminal processes in policy disputes has become all too common. It is my hope that the action I am taking today will begin to restore these disputes to the battleground where they properly belong." Similarly, President Clinton pardoned his CIA director, John Deutsch. The pardon of Deutch spared the former CIA director any criminal charges for mishandling secret information on his home computer. Deutch, had resigned in 1996 and had his security clearance stripped. He had been considering a deal with the Justice Department in which he would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of keeping classified data on home computers when President Clinton provided a pardon. President Clinton pardoned each and every person convicted of anything in the investigation of former Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy by independent counsel Donald Smaltz. Those persons included Tyson Foods official Archie Schaffer, whose conviction was pending on appeal at the time of the pardon. These pardons didn't go through the "normal" process at the Justice Department. In fact President Clinton had 47 pardons that did not go through the Justice Department process. townhall.com