And, yes, I DO take it personally: Stop defending Clinton

Scooter Libby.......................Marc Rich

the virtually unquestioned article of faith in most of the liberal/progressive blogosphere goes like this...

Bush = bad; Clinton = good

it really should be more like this...

Bush = evil; Clinton = bad

the latest tortured response to yet another of the r's whiney, "well, clinton did it TOO," b.s. revolving around clinton's pardon of marc rich and 210 others in his last 9 weeks in office, is a case in point... today's progress report takes on tony snow, arguably a more adept purveyor of lies than scotty mcclellan, who, in a usa today op-ed, tries to justify bush's making a mockery of the entire american justice system... snow 1) minimizes the egregiousness of bush's action by noting the president's plenary constitutional powers (another subliminal plug for the unitary executive), and 2) makes the usual comparison with bill clinton... snow argues that since bush was acting in accordance with his executive powers, and that there was little investigation of clinton's pardons, why should bush be taking heat for commuting libby's sentence... the progress report rebuts by pointing out that "federal prosecutors concluded 'it wasn't appropriate to bring charges' in [Clinton's] case"...

dems, liberals and progressives need to stop defending bill clinton... just because he's a democrat, working overtime to make him look good doesn't add one whit to democratic credibility... it would be a LOT more honest to point out that clinton was acting within the same corrupt system that's still in place, and certainly held up his end by keeping it going for his eight years in office... the LAST myth we need to foster is that everything is going to be different when a democratic president takes office on 20 january 2009...

also, let's keep some of the facts on marc rich out in the open... while rich didn't obstruct an investigation into the outing of a cia agent and, on top of that, lie about it, rich isn't exactly a candidate for sainthood either...

marc rich...

In 1983, Rich and partner Pincus Green were indicted by U.S. Attorney and future mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani, on charges of tax evasion and illegal trading with Iran. Both of them fled to Switzerland before a court appearance, and they remained on the FBI's Most Wanted List for many years.

On January 20, 2001, hours before leaving office, President Bill Clinton granted Rich a presidential pardon. Since Rich's former wife and mother of his three children, socialite Denise Rich, had made large donations to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Library during Clinton's time in office, Clinton's critics alleged that Rich's pardon had been bought. Rich had also made substantial donations to Israeli charitable foundations. Clinton explained his decision by noting that similar situations were settled in civil, not criminal court, and cited clemency pleas from Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Federal Prosecutor Mary Jo White was appointed to investigate. She stepped down before the investigation was finished and was replaced by James Comey. Though Comey was critical of Clinton's pardons, he could not find any grounds on which to indict him.

During hearings after Rich's pardon, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who had represented Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000, denied that Rich had violated the tax laws, but criticized him for trading with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages. In his letter to the New York Times, Bill Clinton explained why he pardoned Rich, noting that U.S. tax professors Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center concluded that no crime was committed, and that the companies' tax reporting position was reasonable. [New York Times, February 18, 2001][2]. In the same letter Clinton listed Libby as one of three "distinguished Republican lawyers" who supported Rich's pardon.

what we really need to face as a country is that we've got rot sprinkled liberally (pardon the very bad pun) throughout our government... it's become almost impossible to separate out the wheat from the chaff, but it's obvious as hell that there's enough power in congressional leadership to keep the status quo going for a very long time, and that's not even mentioning the horror that is the bush administration and their puppet makeover that is now our supreme court...

thanks to the daily show, here's a photo of the bed all these people sleep in...