Today, Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote about the White House response to Bill and Hillary Clinton's criticism of the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence commutation. The Bush administration, through its press spokesman Tony Snow, ridiculed the Clintons' attack on the president's decision with regard to Libby, pointing to former President Clinton's pardon of millionaire businessman Marc Rich on his last day in office. Froomkin was not amused, claiming this is a distraction from the real issues, whatever they are. Let's focus especially on this part of Froomkin's "argument": "And furthermore, there is an ethical chasm between Clinton's pardons -- unseemly as they were -- and Bush's decision to grant clemency to someone involved in an investigation of his own White House."
Baloney. Lookit: 1] What "investigation"? As far as one can tell, the Fitzgerald investigation is over and Libby is going to be all they'll get. We already know who "leaked" Valerie Plame's name to the media, and there's no evidence it was done deliberately for "revenge" or whatever, nor am I convinced that Plame was covert. 2] Even liberals such as Alan Dershowitz and Richard Cohen agree Libby's sentence was excessive. 3] Now, let's look at Marc Rich--extremely wealthy; convicted of a crime; on the day of his pardon, he was still in France, where he'd skedaddled some time before rather than do the time--he'd done no time whatsoever; as far as one knows, there were no cries that Rich had been convicted unjustly or that he'd been done wrong; but there WERE those who pointed out that his wife was a big-time Democratic Party contributor and was a Friend of Bill.
So Rich was pardoned. "Chasm"? Yes, there is one--and once again it's the chasm between a member of the Washington DC mainstream media and reality.
