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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (20365)	6/7/2007 9:09:31 AM
From: Mr. Palau	Respond to of 71588

"Libby's judge known as 'tough guy'; that's why Bush appointed him Libby's judge was one the president's first judicial appointments. By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Years ago, when he was a local trial judge, Reggie B. Walton developed a reputation for his sentencing of ordinary street thugs. "If you got convicted, he was going to smack you," said Randall Eliason, a former prosecutor who recalled that Walton would often sentence defendants more harshly than other judges would. On Tuesday, Walton extended a measure of his justice to a more prominent defendant: former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Rejecting pleas for leniency from scores of prominent public officials, Walton sentenced Libby to 2 1/2 years. On top of the stiff sentence, the judge indicated that he was inclined to order Libby to begin serving the sentence immediately, even before his lawyers have appealed his case. The outcome stunned supporters of the amiable, career public servant and stirred talk of a presidential pardon. That Walton would put the Bush administration in an uncomfortable position of having to consider a politically charged pardon for Libby is highly ironic: The 58-year-old jurist was one of the first appointments that Bush made to the federal bench in October 2001, a prime example of a new law-and-order mentality that the administration wanted to infuse in the courts. "Bush wanted people to know that 'I appoint tough guys to the bench,' " said Roscoe Howard, the U.S. attorney in Washington during Bush's first term. "They appointed him just for what he did to Scooter; they were just not expecting it to happen to Scooter."