PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

in the wake of bush’s commutation of libby’s prison sentence, democrats in congress are all worked up.  another wrong has been committed by this administration and democrats want to look busy trying to do something about it, without actually having to take an real, strong, definitive action.

another hearing.  yes, that’s right.  the house judiciary committee has announced that it will hold hearings on the president’s clemency powers.  doesn’t it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?  good thing they’re on our side… oh, wait….  what could possibly come from these hearings?  i guess it’s about all the judiciary committee can do, though in everything i’ve read about this, no one has said the president was, or even might have been, out of bounds.  i haven’t heard anything suggesting the commutation of libby’s prison sentence was beyond the powers of the executive branch.

now it seems that representative robert wexler feels so strongly about the president’s action regarding libby’s sentence, that he wants to proceed with censure hearings.  if you’re not sure what that means, here’s a handy article for your review.  in short, it means nothing.  absolutely nothing.  it’s public reprimand.  a censure is a very official way for congress to tell the president, “you’ve been bad.”  either this president is so buffered from the press and public opinion that he’s unaware that we think ‘he’s been bad,’ or he knows what most of us think and simply doesn’t care.  either way, i don’t think a censure is going to do much but make CONGRESS look foolish.  the way i see it, a congressional censure of the president is like a mother scolding her child for stealing a candy bar, but then not making the child return it.  a censure is a completely empty gesture, which is something, in my opinion, at which this congress has become quite adept.

libby’s two and a half year prison sentence, from everything i’ve read, was not excessive.  in fact, i found an article about a similar conviction and sentence.  if the president had followed the normal procedure for this sort of thing, checking with the DOJ, he might have learned that libby’s prison sentence was, in fact, not excessive.  of course, you and i both know little bush wasn’t really interested in any of the details.  bush just wanted to keep his buddy out of prison, possibly to keep him from spilling about what the administration really knows about the valerie plame outing.

in my opinion, the only proper course at this point is the drafting and ratification of ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT against BOTH the president and vice president. democrats say impeachment proceedings would lock up congress for months.  probably, but i say, so what! sometimes the right thing to do is also the hard thing to do. of course, if our politicians knew the definition of the word honesty, they might tell us that impeachment proceedings are a political black whole with no clear ‘winning scenario’ for anyone.  anyone, that is except for the american people and, dare i say, the rest of the world.