Now that the uproar over the potential impeachable obstruction of justice by the Decider Guy is building, it's instructive I think to go back and look at another interesting case of Beloved Leaders compassion for the convicted.
His BFF Alberto Gonzales did a bang-up job as his reader of affidavits in Texas on complex death-penalty cases. Preznit I-for-an-Eye was all about sticking the needle in when required, because, dammit Juries R'Justice!!!
Jim Marcus, an attorney for convicted murderer Kenneth Ray Ransom, said, for example, that Gonzales's memo does not correctly state the basis for the clemency request he filed in 1997. "Had I known that the 40-page petition I filed would be boiled down to one slipshod sentence in Mr. Gonzales's memo, I would simply have filed a one-sentence petition," he said.
White House spokesman Brian R. Besanceney said in response to the complaints yesterday that Gonzales and his colleagues in the Texas counsel's office "treated each clemency petition with careful scrutiny and sensitivity." He also said the summaries Gonzales prepared represented "a small fraction of the information provided to the governor" and sought only to document "the governor's final decision" rather than recommend a course of action.
So, besides Scooter, who else has committed a crime that Our Little King has found worthy of commutation? Why none other than Henry Lee Lucas, an all-around nice guy.
Lucas's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998 by then-Governor George W. Bush. His was the only death penalty case among the 153 that came across George W. Bush's desk in his tenure as Texas Governor (including that of Karla Faye Tucker) in which Governor Bush intervened and commuted the death sentence.
So, Scooter is at least in good company ... a convicted liar and convicted murderer, two of the people George Likes Best.
It's unsurprising that Gonzo probably gave Beloved Leader input that affirmed his decision. It's what he does, somewhere between either deciding to spit or swallow from his post on his knees.
Keith Olberman has gotten it right again, as has Digby. Impeachment would be a mess waiting to happen, however investigations that lead to a resignation might be worth pursuing. After all, either or both men have made enough money for themselves and their families off the blood of Americans to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. Resignation would mean that we would be paying them a pension for their malfeasance in office, but hell that's a small price to pay to be rid of them both.
