Scooter Libby Sentenced to 30 Mths Jail Term

I will eat my head if Scooter Libby spends as much as a day of his jail term! Despite the 30 month sentence and 250,000 fine, I am sure that Libby will get away with bail pending his appeal, which will lead to a lengthy process taking him into the end of 2008 and a pardon by the outgoing chief perjurer.

I can't help wondering if the somewhat stiff sentence isn't somehow supposed to elicit sympathy from the public and hence justify a pardon, or at least make the idea of it seem reasonable.

I don't know the judge in the case, or his political affiliations, but I do know that many of his appointments were issued by GOP presidents from Reagan through to George W. as well as by right leaning judges. I put nothing past this white house whose Machiavellian tactics, I believe, know no boundaries. Some pundits claim that a pardon is a sensitive issue which the public does not like too much and that is only ever used in very special circumstances. My question is, "since when did W. give a monkey's a** about what the public thinks?" There is way too much support from the right to ensure that Libby does not serve any time. With Fred Thompson about to join the race, I am sure he will make the Libby case a campaign trail issue keeping it in the limelight only adding to the pressure on W. to pardon the man.

While pundits think that the sentence is somewhat stiff, perjury is a serious offense, and depending on the specifics of the case, often leads to jail terms. In the U.K. two prominent former senior members of the Conservative government served about two years each for perjury in cases that did not even involve the obstruction of justice. The first, a peer in the house of Lords, Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years for lying in his libel case seeking damages over a story published in several magazines about him and a prostitute. The second, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet Minister and likely future Prime Minister was sentenced to serve time for lying about a hotel stay paid for him by a wealthy Saudi business associate.

Can you imagine if such crimes were punishable with jail terms here in the states, Capitol Hill would be emptied of congressmen and senators! Libby's crime is particularly serious given the issues of national interest involved and due to the fact that his crime led to the failure to investigate a matter of national security. Further, it was a case that stemmed from an act that demonstrated the White House's complete and total disregard for the intelligence community and the very institutions that serve this country, in the administration's leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA credentials.