Politicians and Pals

A great many people are all a-bubble about George Bush's commutation of I. Lewis Libby's sentence for purjury.

Libby is a former member of VP Cheney's staff. Libby was convicted of lying to FBI agents and grand jury members. The court fined Libby $250,000 and sentenced him to 30 months in jail. George Bush commuted the jail sentence, but left the fine in place.

None of this surprises me. Politicians and their pals rarely end up in jail. In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after he was charged with accepting bribes while governor of Maryland. In a successful plea bargain, Agnew was sentenced to three years of probation and given a fine of $10,000.

At the time of this scandal, Richard Nixon was president. He subsequently resigned after it became know that he had authorized the burglary of Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Gerald Ford had become vice president after Agnew's resigation. He then became president when Nixon resigned. One of his first acts as President was to pardon Nixon for any crimes he had committed while in the White House.

These are only a few examples. I'm not listing these facts in order to defend or justify commutation of Libby's sentence. I merely want the reader to know that this sort of thing is far more common than one might expect.