Originally posted by Shahram:
You're right, if he was going to do this much, he should have pardoned. Commuting his sentence is disrespectful of the jury system and calls the process of law into opprobrium. Pardoning someone the President feels was railroaded is the privilege of the Executive, but a commutation is like saying "Sure, he was guilty, but fuck you anyway." He said he was "respectful of the jury's decision", but he immediately and with no apologies disrespected the jury's decision.
Of course, none of this really matters. What are we gonna do, not vote for him the next time? Lower his approval rating? This administration has done what it came to do, and now it's time to stagnate.
Your sarcasm aside, yes he should have been pardoned. Commuting the sentence is a bit of political cowardice on Bush's part. Why not just pardon him..... but then again Bush has been showing a lot of political cowardice in his second term.
Bush should have ordered the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to end the case as soon as Fitzgerald knew who the leaker was and refused to prosecute him. There was no case after that.
Instead, the prosecutor (who had unprecedented AG powers granted to him in this instance of Special Counsel) still went on a wild politically motivated witch hunt. The prosecutor clearly abused the scope of his investigation and committed prosecutorial misconduct. By Bush not putting his foot down earlier in the case, that showed political cowardice on his part.
But then again, he hired a complete incompetent, Alberto Gonzalez, by that point in time (another political coward) whose job it was to be on top of all this garbage.
Sometimes I think this guy Gonzales was one of Bush's former landscapers or something.
![[Freak]](graemlins/freak.gif)
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