Let's Not Forget Who This Is About

(cartoon courtesy Dave the Rave)

Since the Libby commutation broke, the attention has been placed on the President's mendaciousness, his double standards for people like Karla Faye Tucker, his previous statements about the role of the executive in sentencing changes, how this puts Bush on better footing with his base, and on and on.

Did everybody simply forget the events of last week? The Washington Post laid out in meticulous detail that the President is an empty suit, and that anything truly odious sanctioned in the White House is really managed by the Office of the Vice President. Indeed, the Libby commutation would be the most obvious evidence of Fourthbranch's hand, considering that Libby was his chief of staff. And Tony Snow found it impossible to deny queries about whether Fourthbranch was involved in the deliberations:

In a White House press conference on Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared to suggest that Vice President Dick Cheney's views may have been considered by President George W. Bush as he deliberated on whether to commute or pardon the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"Everybody had an opportunity to share their views," Snow said in the Tuesday morning press conference.

Snow later clouded up his statement that the Vice President had been involved in the deliberations.

"I'm sure that the Vice President may have expressed an opinion," Snow said, then adding. "He may have recused himself, I honestly don't know."

And yet Page 1 of the Washington Post this morning describes the decision as one "made largely alone," which is probably correct, if you mean only by Cheney.

President Bush limited his deliberations over commuting the prison term of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to a few close aides, opting not to consult with the Justice Department and rebuffing efforts by friends to lobby on Libby's behalf, administration officials and people close to Bush said yesterday.

"We were all told to stay away from it," said an old Bush friend from Texas who is close to Libby and would not speak for attribution. "When we called over there, they said the president is well aware of the situation, so don't raise it. None of us lobbied him because they told us not to."

For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department's pardon attorney.

So the Vice President "may have expressed an opinion," but everybody else was told not to say a word. To be fair, that does mean that Bush received advice from both the executive and the legislative branches, all in one person!

We all know what's going on here. While both Bush and Fourthbranch are exposed to real culpability in leaking Valerie Plame's identity and mishandling classified information if Libby ever flipped, clearly Fourthbranch is more exposed. Patrick Fitzgerald alluded to this specifically during the trial by stating outright that there is a cloud over the Vice Presidency. This commutation is simply obstruction of justice to cover up other obstruction of justice. And from the very beginning, Fourthbranch has been the most involved in the leaking of classified information, the most involved in exacting revenge from Joe Wilson for undercutting his case for war, and the most involved in outright lying in the run-up to war. So the fingerprints are big enough that you don't need CSI to come in with their equipment.

This travesty of justice demands more scrutiny be put on Fourthbranch, not Bush. Without Fourthbranch, Bush would be convening panels to tell him how history will vindicate him and surveying the pictures of past Presidents to see if he was more handsome (as James Buchanan did. Buchanan also thought history would treat him favorably. It's the last refuge of a Presidential scoundrel). No, the proper Constitutional remedy right now is HR 333, calling for the removal of the Vice President, so that this man can be held to account for his personal assault on the very fabric of American democracy. It may not succeed, but to those who represent us in Washington, who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, there is no recourse. In closing, here's John Dean:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major or minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration

For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.

A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records [...]

Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not "the decider," for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.

It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly "misunderestimated" our nominal president and his vice president.