The Criminalization of Politics: The Scooter Libby Verdict

In the latest disgrace to justice, Scooter Libby was found guilty of obstruction of justice in an investigation that should never have happened. The Machiavellian Democrats are experts at using the legal system to punish political opponents, and this is just another case.

Valerie Plame, a Democrat CIA agent, conspired with her leftist husband Joe Wilson to create a false story to undermine Bush just before the 2004 elections. She sent her unemployed hubby on the Government's dime to Niger to investigate the claim that Saddam sought yellow cake for his planned nuclear program. Joe Wilson went to Niger, confirmed that the story was indeed true, then later lied about it to the press, saying that Saddam had not sought yellow cake in Niger, and lo, the whole story was just a Bush lie to get the nation into an unjustified war.

One has to wonder how the Central Intelligence Agency can act as a hostile force to its own government and become a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.

When someone leaked the story of the Plame-Wilson bogus Niger investigation, the CIA retaliated by referring the leak to the Justice Department. They claimed that a CIA undercover operative had been outed for partisan political reasons. Actually, the opposite was true: the CIA, and Valerie Plame in particular, had created a bogus investigation and then a bogus charge to Justice for partisan political reasons, showing again how Democrats love their party far more than they love their country.

But Valerie Plame was not an undercover CIA operative: she had been a desk jockey for five years and her privacy in the matter no longer protected by law. Whoever outed her did not commit a crime. Since no crime was committed there should never have been an investigation to begin with. Contrast this travesty with Sandy Berger, the Democrat who stole documents from the National Archives and destroyed them to protect the reputation of his former boss, Bill Clinton. Berger received a fine and temporary suspension of his security clearance, a light punishment for a crime far more serious than the non-crime for which Libby was investigated.

National Review today states flatly that the whole investigation was bogus and that Libby should be pardoned post haste. They said:

There should have been no referral, no special counsel, no indictments, and no trial. The “CIA-leak case” has been a travesty. A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left's fevers, the media's scandal-mongering, and President Bush's failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn’t have lasted beyond its opening act.

Read the whole thing here.

The Democrats should think about this. If they are to abuse the judicial system for partisan political reasons, perhaps we Republicans should use it to prosecute real traitors, like the editors of the New York Times, like John Kerry and Hanoi Jane Fonda, for their acts of treason. Let's try them, convict them and retire them to the Gray Bar Hotel. If I remember correctly, there is no statute of limitations on treason. We can always revisit these options when the time is right.

But that wouldn't be partisn politics. That would just be simple justice.