Justice for Scooter

Now that Scooter’s jail sentence has been commuted, we can all see the deep respect this Administration has for our system of justice. It doesn’t take a great deal of political acumen to understand what happened here. My mother, about the least guileful or politically cynical person you could imagine, told me that it was obvious to her that Bush was rewarding his minion for protecting his Administration. My mother is about as average an American as you can get; if my mother forms an opinion on a political issue, you can be assured that Americans everywhere share it.

Throughout history, leaders behave badly quite often. A long history of abuses, slights, crimes, and calumnies can often be borne by the people with little or no consequence to the leader. But then there will come that one act, an act of such stunning effrontery and contempt for public opinion and the common sense of the citizens, that it simply cannot be explained as instrumental to any goal but only as evidence of complete disdain for a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. It is at that moment that the leader becomes branded as an enemy of all. It is then that history must condemn that leader as a purely malevolent force for all time. It seems to me that the commutation of Libby’s sentence is that final act that will seal Bush’s legacy for all time as wholly vile.

The glee of Bush’s few remaining partisans over the Libby commutation is telling. They rejoice because Bush has signaled finally and unambiguously that his highest loyalty is not to this nation, our Constitution, or the rule of law, but only and ever to those who put loyalty to him and his party above all other values. The goal of the fascists has thus been achieved. They have succeeded at enthroning  partisan loyalty above every other value at the highest level of our government. Such perversion of loyalty to a leader is the prerequisite for the destruction of a Republic. Placing loyalty to an officeholder above loyalty to the office and the laws that create that office is the first step down the road to tyranny.

So, I welcome the Libby commutation. As Old King Log says, "Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Let any further pretense of this Administration’s legitimacy fall from the eyes of the American public, and let them see their ‘President’ for what he is: a crime boss protecting his button man.