Last month, the Bush Administration started a push to create mandatory minimum sentences for all felonies…
Administration pushes for mandatory sentences
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals.
The Justice Department is offering the plan as an opening salvo in a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory.
Today, President Bush commuted the 30 month prison sentence of former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Scooter Libby, who was charge with 5 felonies, including lying to Federal prosecutors and obstructing justice.
President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.
Either he’s a schizo, or he’s playing favorites.
The only way this whole episode makes sense is if Bush was scared shitless that Libby was going to cut a deal with Fitzgerald. A deal that would involve throwing Bush, Rove, and possibly Cheney under the bus.
Bush says he “agrees with the jury’s verdict”, but that the sentence is too harsh. But rather than reducing Libby’s jail time to 12 or 6 months (which would disturb me, but I could probably live with), he said away with it all. for god’s sake, paris hilton did jail time!
The whole reason Fitzgerald pursued Libby for lying and obstructing justice is because he said Libby had “thrown sand in his face”, preventing him from finding out the full truth of this case. By convicting Libby and tightening the screws on him, Fitzgerald was hoping Libby would crack and cut a deal.
After yesterday’s early morning ruling that said Libby was going to jail in weeks, Bush threw in the towel, short circuiting the judicial process, and saved his own ass.
I’m sorry to say I think the laws letting the President over-ride juducial decisions were made when people thought he’d use them in cases of correcting a wrong. Generally in a mismanaged company, at this point there is an audit of processes. Hopefully one day the masses will ask for that.
Funny little story ran by online that I found interesting – just because it didn’t seem to get any attention and most people didn’t notice it. Politically I would think its a big statement – then again, its nothing people didn’t suspect. So I guess people shrugged and went on their way.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20070621/bs_prweb/prweb534642_1
p.s. You can always check FAMM’s website (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) as they have a lot of information about the mandatory minimum laws/ rulings.
Jacob – hello from Coachella.
hey Lea!
it was very neat to bump into you out there, or rather you stumble across my near comatose body. certainly a crazy weekend.
and thanks for the link to that article. reads as kind of an important revelation, with huge implications. but you’re right, not much attention paid apparently.
we’ve invested a ton of time in the past looking into a lot of the unanswered questions regarding that day. i actually went and saw that Fetzer guy talk a while back. the frustrating part of the whole thing is that the more you look and research, the more questions you have. and when there are little ‘discoveries’, such as in this article, nothing ever gains traction.
but the beat goes on and there remains a lot of energy in finding the truth. we shall see…
Here’s some truth…
http://www.zombietime.com/
really beetlejuice, you’re really going to throw a website like that at me? you are going to present to me the ‘exposing’ of a bunch of crusty old over the hill trans-sexual-femma-nudist-trustfund-liberal-anti-america-communists from San Fransico? what does that accomplish, how does this move the dialogue forward?
that’s like the equivalent of me putting up a link to all the highlights from Jesus Camp and saying “this is what being conservative means.” i wouldn’t do that because it’s intellectually dishonest and does nothing but denegrate by means of simplification.
these fringe people, from both sides of the spectrum, should not be given the time of day. their blind passion and absolutism can only get them so far. posterization gives them an artificial power, and incidentally only serves to reinforce the alarmists’ mentality. O’Reilly has made a career of this.
but, ok, forget all that. does not the article which Lea linked to raise an eyebrow? if indeed this data is THE ACTUAL DATA from the blackbox on Flight 77, analyzed thoroughly and correctly by pilot and aviation professionals, does not it elicit some questions or bewilderment? all i can say is it does for me…
Sorry,I couldn’t resist, the site is too funny!
Regarding Lea’s link,i really have not been following this,but wasn’t there a video of the jet hitting the pentagon. I remember seeing it.
Lea, do you really believe these conspiracy theorists? One of these guys wants a military coup to overthrow Bush, the other thinks most terrorist attacks are carried out by western intelligence. Real kooks(in my opinion)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Barrett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Fetzer
no there’s not a video of a jet hitting the pentagon.
yes, you know how to go wikipedia.
and yes, the american government has done (many) shady things.
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beetlejuice, you obviously didn’t even look into the whole flight recorder data issue. You instead posted two links from wikipedia about two people in the 9/11 truth movement. God knows what that’s supposed to prove.
Jacob and Lea probably feel different than me on this one, but I’d just rather not argue about the Pentagon altogether. It’s a very important article and event, which we should probably bring up again at some point, but in the end, it’s not going to be about the Pentagon….it’s going to be about wtc7.
I guess i’m just trying to understand the thesis here. Lea posted an article by the “911 truth movement”. The “experts” in the article she linked are college professors/activists of philosophy etc. one ,an Islamic convert. Their article insinuates that several of the major terrorist attacks were orchestrated by our own government.Even when all the terrorist(Islamic) on the planes were identified (wtc7)?! These theories seem way outside the realm of common sense. Do you really believe them?
I’m going to have to agree with Ian that WTC7 is key. Most people either don’t know about it or think about it. Which was somewhat my point in posting the link. Just that articles can come out that seem to be of some merit and it passes the public by. It seems they have been well trained not to think or question. I don’t know that they want to know the truth about 9/11 or our government. If they did, the more important question to me is what would they do about it?
it’s a weird vortex, our media and how information flows through it. at face value, that article more than warrants discussion and attention beyond ‘yahoo news’.
and maybe it doesn’t really have that much to do with our media itself, which is monolith, but rather the individual’s perception of information and how that’s, like you said, been systematically shaped or trained over time. the whole thing is very problematic.
…
there’s 5 frames of something going into the pentagon, this flight data describes the jet as not being there within those frames, and that’s what makes the head spin.
it’s not a matter of ‘believing’ any of these theories. it’s really a question of can we be receptive to facts, ideas, information in general that doesn’t fit within our own defined (and therefore limited) space of what we call common sense. if we are, things then begin to open up and possiblites become endless. i suppose though that’s an uncomfortable place for some people to be.
Aren’t the people who were on the plane that (supposedly) crashed into the Pentagon dead? If there was no plane that hit the Pentagon,why or how are these people dead? This seems to be a common sense question because other possiblities don’t make (logical)sense in this instance.
that is a logical question. if AA flight 77 didn’t hit the pentagon, how did the people who were on passenger list die? good question. But like i asked before, what does that have to do with the facts of the article?
we here aren’t claiming to know everything that happened with flight 77.
but we are claiming that the government explanation for the attack at the Pentagon on 9/11 does not hold water. We can argue all day long about theories of planes disappearing, or missiles being shot, or whatever else one can think of…but that’s just theories. To answer your question would only result in another theory. I’d like to stick to the facts.
What has been presented to us with the flight recorder data are facts. Facts that contradict Government accounts of the incident. It’s now up to us to decide who’s “Facts” are correct.
God I hate the world of Truthiness.
Ian, Do you think all of the relatives and friends of those (supposedly) killed on this flight are being hoodwinked by the goverment. That those people were taken somewhere and held or killed? Not trying to be “truthy” here,but logic still has it’s place(despite Colbert)
beetlejuice, you’re killing me here. I have no idea how those on flight 77 were killed. And this article doesn’t purport to explain that either. That’s not what this is about anyway. I don’t know how many more times I’m going to have to type this.
Also, if a family member of mine had died in this event, I would damn sure want to know the truth about it. And data like the black box recorder would be valuable information that I would like to look at.
And I guess you’re insinuating that it would be easier for relatives and friends of the flight 77 victims to know the truth about the incident. I don’t know why you would think that’s the case. You think the government gives inside info to victim’s relatives? They made relatives sign all their rights away in order to receive compensation for the events. By taking the money, they could not sue the government for anything, not even negligence.
And don’t forget the government doesn’t even give a shit about the 9/11 rescue workers either. The EPA straight up lied saying that Ground Zero was safe work in. http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/EPA_Scientest_Alleges_WTC_Fraud_0825.html
Don’t you wonder how a jumbo jet with all those people aboard could simply vaporize? If the jet didn’t go into the pentagon,where is it? Hey, it’s your theory ,not mine.
Well apparently the plane did vaporize according to the official account.
again, again, again, we’re not putting forth any theories here b. all we’re talking about is the data on this black box recorder, and what the significance is. do you dispute this data? if indeed then say so and we can move on.
and funny you mention vaporize, as that’s precisely what was described as happening with regards to the plane itself and the passengers onboard when it went into the building. no bodies were recovered at the crash site. hey, it’s the government’s theory, not mine.
you beat me to it ian you bastard.
C’mon, If there was a black box,then their was a plane?,right? unless they have black boxes on missles. I’m back to the zombietime.com site-g-night.
around around