Supreme Court Wants No More Of Bush-Hating Valerie Plame

MSNBC.com:

The U.S. Supreme Court will not revive a lawsuit that former CIA operative Valerie Plame brought against former members of the Bush administration.

The court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

A lower court last year threw out the lawsuit in which Plame and Wilson accused former Vice President Dick Cheney and several former high-ranking administration officials of disclosing her identity to reporters in 2003. Plame and Wilson said that violated their constitutional rights.

The lawsuit named former presidential adviser Karl Rove; Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The U.S. Court of Appeals said that Plame and Wilson did not meet the legal standard for constitutional claims, in part because the lawsuit hinges on alleged violations of the Privacy Act — a law that does not cover the president or the vice president's offices.

Richard Armitage "outed" former secretary Valerie Plame, not Karl Rove, not Scooter Libby or anyone else in the Bush administration. Now it's about time the book on the arrogant pricks that are Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame be closed.

Maureen Dowd: Still Suffering From Huge BDS

Oh, the poor BDS sufferers on the Left. Our dear 43rd President hasn't made a peep since he left office a month ago and the typical loons on the Left just can't let him go:

There were clues in the last couple of years that W. and Condi were trying to sidle away from Cheney by using the forbidden strategy of diplomacy in dealing with Iran and North Korea, and by cutting loose Rummy.

As one official who worked closely with both W. and Cheney told The New York Daily News’s Tom DeFrank the last week of the administration: “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve heard the president say, ‘Run that by the vice president’s office.’ You used to hear that all the time.”

The clearest sign of disaffection we have is Bush’s refusal to pardon Scooter Libby, the man known as “Cheney’s Cheney,” despite Vice’s tense and emotional pleading. It was his final, too little, too late “You are not the boss of me” spurning of Dick Cheney.

It may seem pointless for W. to worry about his legacy at this juncture, but he clearly did not want to add a Marc Rich blot to all the other gigantic blots on the copybook.

Because their BDS never ceases to end, now the loons want to create this supposed discord between Cheney and Bush due to Cheney supposedly being pissed that the former President didn't grant a Scooter Libby a full pardon. But here's what the idiots refuse to acknowledge: President Bush stayed true to form in not pulling a Bill Clinton and exploiting his authority to pardon criminals. Liberals all predicted and were ready to gloat the day Bush pardoned Libby, but that day never happened and yet all the BDS-sufferers attacked the President anyway. Bush did enough for Libby in commuting his sentence and if Cheney really is still upset about his not pardoning Libby, he should get over it.

President Bush Does Right By Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean

CNN.com:

On his final full day in office, President Bush issued commutations for two former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted in 2006 of shooting and wounding an unarmed illegal immigrant -- suspected of drug smuggling at the time -- and then covering it up.

The prison sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean will now end March 20.

Ramos had received an 11-year prison sentence; Compean had received a 12-year term. They began serving their sentences in January 2007.

The Office of the Pardon Attorney was still reviewing the clemency request when Bush made his decision, Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said.

"The president has reviewed the circumstances of this case as a whole and the conditions of confinement and believes the sentences they received are too harsh and that they, and their families, have suffered enough for their crimes," a senior administration official said.

"Commuting their sentences does not diminish the seriousness of their crimes. Ramos and Compean are convicted felons who violated their oaths to uphold the law and have been severely punished," the official stated.

"This commutation gives them an opportunity to return to their families and communities, but both men will have to carry the burden of being convicted felons and the shame of violating their oaths for the rest of their lives."

Good job by the President. Funny that despite many liberals predictions that he would, the President still hasn't commuted the sentence of or pardoned "Scooter" Libby.

When It Comes To Pardons President Bush Is Still No Bill Clinton

Once again proof that even when he does the right thing, President Bush just can't win with the loony Left. After having the wherewithal to reverse a mistake in pardoning convicted New York mortgage fraudster Isaac Toussie, the inept New York Times still goes out of its way to criticize the President:

President Bush changed his mind on Christmas Eve, pulling back a pardon he had extended a day earlier to a Brooklyn developer at the center of a Long Island real estate fraud case and adding a bizarre twist to the episode.

The developer, Isaac R. Toussie, who was listed Tuesday as one of the beneficiaries of the president’s constitutional power to wipe away a criminal record, is not being pardoned “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” the White House said late Wednesday afternoon.

The terse White House statement did not elaborate, but officials familiar with the case said that presidential aides — and perhaps President Bush himself — were concerned about appearances, because Mr. Toussie’s father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee last April, for what apparently was his first political contribution. He also donated $2,300 to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.

Regardless of how Mr. Toussie is perceived by Republicans in Washington, the name of Isaac Toussie is detested by many working-class people in the New York metropolitan area. In 2001, several hundred of them sued in Federal District Court, accusing Mr. Toussie and his father of masterminding a scheme in which inexperienced or first-time buyers were promised affordable and comfortable suburban houses but instead were sold shoddily built homes in poor neighborhoods and saddled by mortgage payments that shot up surprisingly.

The Times insinuates it, but the Toussie case had nothing to do with party affiliation. If that was the case Bush wouldn't have withdrawn the pardon. The President simply saw that he made an error and quickly reversed himself. If anyone's ever abused his pardon privileges it was ex-Prez Bill Clinton, who issues 140 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office alone, including fugitive Marc Rich, whose ex-wife was a prominent donor to Clinton. Indeed, liberals are so desperate to paint Bush as a pardon abuser that they're still holding out hope that the President pardons Scooter Libby before he leaves office. Yet, even if Bush does pardon Libby it still wouldn't be tainting the pardon process as Libby, improperly fingered in the Valerie Plame hyperbole created by the Left, is nowhere the slimeball that Marc Rich, Almon Braswell, Peter MacDonald and the many other scum that Slick Willie pardoned on his way out of office.