Bush's Criminal Compassion

"Compassionate Conservative" is how candidate George W. Bush defined himself in 2000 and vowed that if made president "politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better"

We now know Bush isn't a conservative. Conservative "values" like fiscal responsibility, avoidance of nation building and tough enforcement of the law have been trampled under King George's buckled boot.

But, it's the compassion part of his self-description that is the most stunningly perverted. He has no compassion for our military.... kept at his almost lone insistence in the crossfire of tribal hatreds in Iraq.

Or, for border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean who are in prison serving sentences of 11 and 12 years for wounding a fleeing drug runner who was given immunity to testify against them. Bush has rejected all pleas that he reduce their sentences or grant them pardons.

But, Bush has bestowed his selective compassion on convicted perjurer "Scooter" Libby by commuting his 30-month prison sentence.

Libby, Vice President Cheney's alter-ego chief of staff, was convicted of lying to a grand jury and federal agents and obstructing justice in the investigation of the leak of the name of a covert CIA operative whose husband tried to unmask the Big Lie of intelligence manipulation.... manipulated intelligence used by the White House as the battering ram of justification for the bloody, costly and unwinnable Iraq war.

And, even as egregious as Libby's commutation is, even more so was the way Bush did it.... without even a nod to precedence or evenhanded justice. It was "A Decision Made Largely Alone." (WaPo)

For this crony, Bush short-circuited the legal system. He didn't run the request for commuting Libby's sentence through the lawyers at the Justice Department, nor even ask the chief prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, for his input.

A disgusted Fitzgerald rejected Bush's action saying "Before the bar of justice all should be equal." It's now obvious, for King George's brand of justice, some are more equal than others.... and his "higher ideals" is shorthand for highhanded expediency in the pursuit of his agenda.

King George has made it abundantly clear, he's not just outside and above the law.... he is the law.