I saw a young woman today in Joplin wearing a t-shirt that said in green letters “Sustainable…Joplin.” Sustainable Joplin is the local chapter of “the Institute of Ecolonomics,” a group that pushes things like hydrogen cars. She hopped in a Toyota 4×4 with the “V-8” badge on the grill. Al Gore writ small.
Hillary Clinton offered this opinion on the commuting of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence: “What we saw today was elevating cronyism above the rule of law.” Hmmm… in this administration when someone commits perjury in front of a grand jury in a politically motivated investigation poking around where it shouldn’t be, that person loses his job, gets a $250,000 fine, is on probation for two years and is branded a convicted felon. In the last Clinton administration when someone committed perjury in front of a grand jury in a politically motivated investigation poking around where it shouldn’t have been, that person kept his job, paid no fine, served no probation and was convicted of no crime. Senator, there’s a saying about those who live in glass houses, so I wouldn’t go throwing stones over a lack of a draconian prison sentence.
Recently, I noticed a considerable overlap between those advocating amnesty for Scooter Libby, of which I approve, and those opposing amnesty for illegal aliens, of which I also approve. Kind of reminds me of the lack of uproar by the Stop the ACLU crowd when Ollie North’s ACLU attorneys got his convictions (rightly) vacated by the appeals court on a technicality. Maybe Bush should have said, “They’ll pay a fine and be on probation. It’s not amnesty, it’s just 12 million commuted sentences.” Amnesty doesn’t mean the rule of law is forgotten in either case; the concept of amnesty is written into our most basic law. Of course….
That leaves me wondering why the President doesn’t just go ahead and issue a blanket pardon for illegal aliens, start building that wall and then push his version of “comprehensive” reform. Clemency is strictly an executive power and not an enumerated power of Congress anyway. I think there’s a bit of schizophrenia over there in the “Unitary Executive” crowd. Trash the Constitution to take powers that rightly belong to Congress (not to mention those pesky rights retained by the people), then trash the Constitution trying to get Congress to exercise powers that are expressly granted to the President.