I hope all of you have seen the odd response of the Democratic Party to the Scooter Libby sentence commutation. It has been uniformly supported by Republicans and uniformly condemned by the Democrats.
Most of the Democratic reactions run along the same lines as Bill Clinton's: he was aghast, horrified, but not surprised. As he says, this administration will just do what they want to do, and treat the law as "a minor obstacle."
This statement ignores the fact that a commutation of a sentence is as lawful as the sentence itself. We may argue about whether or not it was appropriate or wise, but certainly not whether or not it flew in the face of law.
Pardons and commutations have historically been a priviledge of presidents because sometimes, the discipline and conduct of politics demands that kind of action. The pardon and the commutation were necessarily brought into being as legal actions to be granted to people who had lawfully and rightly been convicted and/or sentenced.
Take for example, the actions of George Washington. One of the greatest domestic crises in American history was the Whiskey rebellion. Washington sent the army to crush it, and its leaders were arrested and tried for treason, and found guilty. Washington, having achieved the necessary end, saw fit to promptly pardon those leaders. Was that politically motivated? Surely. was it wrong or did it trample on the law? Decidedly not.
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2 comments:
Politicians are smart people. Easy for us to say, "Why, durn fellow just made a false assertion! Doesn't he know any better? The law doesn't say that!"
Likely he does know the law doesn't say that. But he also knows that the layman most certainly doesn't know what the law says and doesn't want to do his own research.
Consequently, these false assertions work quite well for the politician. Assertions are easy for the layman to believe if 1) You like the fellow making them, and 2) You're too apathetic to do your own digging.
Americans' negligible critical thinking skills = politicians' (dare I say liberals', especially?) greatest ally.
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