I hope the outrage is generalized.

How long will Mr. Olbermann have his job at MSNBC? How long before he is accused, indicted and imprisoned on charges of fomenting dissent and abetting terrorism?

Harsh, Succinct, cold truth. On this eve of U.S. Independence day, it's a message for us all to examine very carefully what kind of leadership is required to being the long, painful reconstruction of democracy in this nation, and to take action to bring it about.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

http://www.democrats.com/thank-you-keith

Also:

Show your approval of Keith's Countdown Show and tonights commentary:
1. viewerservices@msnbc.com
2. letters@msnbc.com
3. countdown@msnbc.com
4. KOlbermann@msnbc.com
5. dabrams@msnbc.com (Dan Abrams is now MSNBC's general manager)

To bad it falls on deaf ears.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday refused to rule out a pardon for I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, adding that he stands by his decision to commute part of the former White House aide's sentence.

"As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out," said Bush, who spoke to reporters a day after he spared Libby from serving a 30-month prison sentence for his role in a case involving the leak of a CIA operative's identity in 2003.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/03/libby-whitehouse.html

the man deserves not only the Murrow award (certainly he seems to channel Murrow's very spirit) but the Emmy for excellence in op/ed reporting on TV.

Hope he manages to stay out of trouble....statements like these are daring the Administration to do something, and quite possibly some loon may try to make an Alan Berg of him....

-5.75,-4.05 "I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard."
William Lloyd Garrison
US abolitionist & editor (1805 - 1879)

heard a single word of this.

I did inhale.

but I also share your fear.

the man deserves not only the Murrow award (certainly he seems to channel Murrow's very spirit) but the Emmy for excellence in op/ed reporting on TV.

He's got my vote. That's the best thing I've heard in a very long time.

An Unpardonable Story of D.C. Hypocrisy

Wednesday July 4, 2007 3:01 PM

By RON FOURNIER

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The hypocrisy is unpardonable. President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of a convicted liar brought out the worst in both parties and politics.

In keeping I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby out of jail, Bush defied his promise to hold wrongdoers accountable and undercut his 2000 campaign pledge to ``restore honor and dignity'' to the White House. And it might be a cynical first step toward issuing a full pardon at the conclusion of his term.

Democrats responded as if they don't live in glass houses, decrying corruption, favoritism and a lack of justice.

``This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice,'' said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a brazen statement from a woman entangled in many Clinton White House scandals, including the final one: On his last day in office, President Clinton granted 140 pardons and 36 commutations, many of them controversial.

One of those pardoned was Marc Rich, who had fled the country after being indicted for tax evasion and whose wife had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes.

Clinton's half brother, Roger, who was convicted of distributing cocaine and lobbied the White House on behalf of others, also received a pardon.

Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid tens of thousands of dollars in his successful bid to win pardons for a businessman under investigation for money laundering and a commutation for a convicted drug trafficker. Her other brother, Tony, lobbied successfully for clemency on behalf of a couple convicted of bank fraud.

It's hard to fathom that those pardons had absolutely nothing to do with cronyism or ideology, but Hillary Clinton defended them. She drew a distinction between her husband's pardons and Bush's commutation.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the senator said Bill Clinton's pardons were simply a routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none was aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy. ``This,'' she said of the Libby commutation, ``was clearly an effort to protect the White House.''

Indeed, there is ample evidence that Libby's actions were fueled by animosity throughout the White House toward opponents of the president's push to war against Iraq.

But Hillary Clinton will have a hard time convincing most voters that her brother-in-law would have gotten a pardon in 2001 had his name been Smith. Or that Rich's pardon plea would have reached the president's desk had he not been a rich Mr. Rich.

The hypocrisy doesn't stop there.

Bush vowed at the start of the investigation to fire anybody involved in the leak of a CIA agent's identity, but one of the leakers, adviser Karl Rove, still works at the White House. Libby was allowed to keep his job until he was indicted for lying about his role.

The president said Libby's sentence was excessive. But the 2 years handed Libby was much like the sentences given others convicted in obstruction cases. Three of every four people convicted for obstruction of justice in federal court were sent to prison, for an average term of more than five years.

Want more hypocrisy? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney praised the commutation for Libby, quite a departure for a guy who brags that he was the first Massachusetts governor to deny every request for a pardon or commutation. Romney even refused a pardon for an Iraq war veteran who, at age 13, was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun.

What about all the Republican politicians who defied public sentiment and insisted that President Clinton be impeached for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky? Many of them now minimize Libby's perjury.

What about all those Democrats who thought public shame was punishment enough for Clinton lying under oath, basically the position adopted today by Libby's supporters? Many of those Democrats now think Libby should go to jail for his perjury.

``There appears to be rank hypocrisy at work here on both sides of the political spectrum,'' said Joe Gaylord, a GOP consultant who worked for House Speaker Newt Gingrich during impeachment. ``It causes Americans to shake their heads in disgust at the political system.''

The Libby case followed the same pattern of hype and hypocrisy established during Clinton's impeachment scandal. It's as if we're all sentenced to relive the same sad scene:

A powerful man lies or otherwise does wrong.

He gets caught.

His enemies overreach in the name of justice.

His friends minimize the crime in pursuit of self-interest.

And the powerful man hires a lawyer.

Marc Rich had a high-priced attorney for his battles with the justice system. His name was Scooter Libby.

---

...will we even hear about this after the 4th of July? Will Olberman's fiery commentary even be mentioned in the New York Times? And after that, will it prompt anybody in congress or the public to do anything more that they haven't tried already?

"Death before being dishonored any more." - Col. Ted Westhusing

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19588942/

Chicago Tribune, By John Kass, July 8

With supporters running away from him—on his immigration policy, on Iraq—with his popularity plummeting, as Republican politicians seek safe harbor, with critics sniping, there are qualities to admire about President Bush.

Almost alone, stubbornly, he stands with our allies, including Israel, refusing to back down from Islamic terrorists working American public opinion in Iraq. He continues to pressure Iran on its pursuit of an Islamic theocratic nuclear nightmare in the Middle East.

He stands for life, opposed to the popular drumbeat from those who would use some human lives to benefit other, more powerful lives through embryonic stem-cell research. The president understands the terrible effect such utilitarian rendering of life would have on future generations.

And he stands against those who babble that "government can't afford a tax cut," a mantra which, if the Founding Fathers arrived in a time machine, would cause them to apply their canes vigorously to the behinds of the babblers.

That said, the president did something this week that I find appalling, and the celebration that ensued among conservative Republicans afterward was even more appalling.

It involves the rule of law. Conservatives were once quite conversant with the phrase while applying it to Democratic presidential stains on a blue dress. Lately though, many have willed themselves to forget, rather than look in the mirror and see their own eyes staring, searching for something irretrievably lost when they abandoned principle for party loyalty.

Last week, on the day before we Americans celebrated our independence, the president announced that he would commute the prison sentence of Scooter Libby.

more

AP, By John Heilprin, July 8

WASHINGTON—The Democrat probing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of a former White House aide said Sunday there is "the suspicion" the aide might have fingered others in the Bush administration if he served time.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers spoke of "the general impression" that Bush last week commuted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 2 1/2 year sentence in the CIA leak case to keep Libby quiet. The White House said Conyers' claim was baseless.

Conyers, D-Mich., has scheduled a committee hearing Wednesday on the matter.

Bush contended Libby's sentence was too harsh. Libby was convicted of lying and obstructing justice in an investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity. The former operative said the White House was trying to discredit her husband, a critic of Bush's Iraq policy.

[...]

"What we have here—and I think we should put it on the table right at the beginning—is that the suspicion was that if Mr. Libby went to prison, he might further implicate other people in the White House, and that there was some kind of relationship here that does not exist in any of President Clinton's pardons, nor, according to those that we've talked to ... is that it's never existed before, ever," Conyers said in a broadcast interview Sunday.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said in response: "That's a fairly ridiculous and baseless assertion. It may be impossible to plumb the depths of Chairman Conyers' 'suspicions', but we can hope this one is near the bottom."

Conyers' counterpart in the Senate, Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said "it would do no good" to ask Libby to testify before Congress. "His silence has been bought and paid for and he would just take the Fifth," Leahy said, referring to the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.