The Zong

So, what did I miss?

The announcement Monday evening that Mr. Libby would serve no prison time in a polarizing case regarding the administration’s tough response to an outspoken Iraq war critic infuriated many Democrats, including presidential candidates like Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.Opinion polls had shown strong public support for Mr. Libby’s original sentence, and Reuters said Tuesday that interviews with ordinary Americans across the country found overwhelming cynicism about the president’s action.

But Republicans’ reactions were mixed. Some endorsed it, while others insisted that Mr. Libby was still being unfairly punished for work as a trusted administration aide. Two Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani, supported the president’s move.

It would be disingenuous for me to call this move unexpected, or to say that the reactions from the left or right were surprising to me, but it’s important for me to outline, very briefly, a few ways in which this administration believes that having three different branches of government is for pussies:

• “The man a heartbeat away from the Oval Office asserts that some rules that apply to everyone else in the executive branch do not apply to him.”
• “The administration has argued that permitting habeas corpus suits by foreigners who are held as enemy combatants outside the United States would paralyze the military during wartime “by giving courts the power to review commanders’ decisions.”
• “President Bush claimed executive privilege Thursday, refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena for White House documents in the investigation into last year’s firings of U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department.”
• “A June 18 report from the Government Accountability Office found that federal officials have not complied with at least six new laws that President Bush had asserted in signing statements that he had no obligation to follow.” (That report can be found here)

And of course:

• “US President George W Bush has intervened to prevent Lewis Libby, a convicted former vice-presidential aide, from serving a prison term.”

Shouldn’t everyone in America be a little tired of all this? I mean, it would be one thing if we were actually living under a dictatorship, and if that dictator actually knew what he was doing, but at this point, it’s as if the American electorate (and two other branches) are allowing the administration to continue their game of pretend beyond all reasonable bounds. No other president in history has ever attempted to go so far towards dissolving our constitution before, and this one is doing it in such a clumsy, limp-dicked fashion that it’s embarrassing. I mean, say what you want about Nixon, but at least that asshole could fucking make sentences.

- M.G.