Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
That's the scenario basically spin free.

Thank you. I guess the problem I'm having is that opinions seem to hinge on stuff you don't mention in your fact list and are perhaps not really knowable.
1. Was Plame actually a covert agent?

Yes. Not only covert, but by all accounts, she was a NOC, able to use her husbands travel as ambassador to Iraq under HW Bush, and other trips to further her operations.

2. Why did the administration leak this information? Is it because they were getting revenge against Wilson or was it simply an explanation for what Wilson was doing in Niger?

This is somewhat unclear, but the strong suspicion is, yes, it was done to try to discredit Joe Wilson and as a warning to anyone else, "cross us and you'll pay." Saying he was in Niger on a junket created by his wife at CIA doesn't address anything Wilson said, so either way, they're trying to take down the messenger. Either they're doing it as payback or they're doing it as a smear job.

3. Was the sentence reasonable or not? (Was the judge trying to send a message to the political class about how the court system actually works for normal people? Even if so, what does a commuted sentence mean?)

Going by basic guidelines, the sentence for Libby starts out at something like 15-21 months (most of the sentencing news reports have notes on this) and the judge has some discretion. In this case, the judge found that based on the position he held and the damage done to the investigation (Libby effectively blocked it) there were circumstances by which he saw fit to increase that to 30 months. That is still no where near the maximum sentence allowable.

What the commuted sentence means is that Libby won't do any jail time. He still has the fine and two years of probation, but the fine is a joke (his legal defense fund had already raised something like 4 million, so forget that). Oh, and Bush has said a full pardon is still an option.

4. Was it reasonable to pursue a prosecution against Libby in the first place?

Yes. Fitzgerald's mandate was the leak and related issues. Libby was prosecuted for deliberately blocking that investigation. That is a related issue, and fully within Fitzgerald's purview.

There is a hell of a lot of smoke here, in particular because Bush has never used his power to commute a sentence in this way before, but I'd prefer to stick to issues that are clearer. In many cases there is a clear disagreement about policy, and its possible to have an opinion about it. In this case there are simply a whole lot of people pointing fingers at eachother and saying "those guys are corrupt partisans who've gone too far." People's opinion about it seems to line up clearly on partisan lines.

I think the telling point to take here is, do a substitution on the subject of the investigation. Instead of a leak, let's say it's about the mob. Libby becomes the accountant who lies to the grand jury. The subject of the grand jury isn't the accountant lying, it's about the mob, but you can bet your ass the accountant is going to get fried for lying to the grand jury.

Something else that is extremely suspicious in this. Libby's defense team has a reputation for being pit bulls. At the start of this they said they were going to have Libby on the stand, have Cheney on the stand, and all of a sudden, they turned into lap dogs and let Scooter go down. Was a deal cut before the trial was even finished? If that's the case, we've gone right into Nixon bribing the plumbers territory.

I have a feeling this is going to get much much worse for W&Co.

RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Was the Libby case political?