How do you respond to the claim that Clinton went free despite his perjury too? I hope you will have a better answer than simply that the things that were lied about were not on the same level. In any case, I find it disappointing that the standard is always lowest and most forgiving for the political leaders at the top in this country (Clinton and Bush II included)

Clinton was never convicted of perjury (he was cleared of all charges), Scooter Libby was. Clinton's deposition was about a civil trail, Libby's a criminal investigation about potential treason. That's the legal difference, and it's a big one.

Morally, what Clinton did was wrong, and he paid for it, even though he was eventually acquitted, legally. But I agree with you about low standards for our leaders, obviously.

Fair enough. By the way, what is the item that a person is holding up in your new banner photo? It's a nice photograph but I'm perplexed by what that is. Also, are there any cool activities in LV for the 4th?

It's 114 degrees out, so I'm not sure the word 'cool' can be used for anything today.

As for the photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21849875@N00/122459559/in/set-7205759409751...

Ah. That's a *Cool* Story about that mystery item. Thanks.
BTW, happy upcoming birthday (is it the 11th?). I always get confused.

The 12th. Same to you, belatedly. (The 1st?)

Yesterday (the 3rd). Happy birthday to us! Are you 28 too?
It gets hard to remember in these late 20s.

i bought scooter's book "the apprentice" at building #19 today for $1.98. i had an outside hope that it was still out-of-print and valuable on ebay, but it is clearly back in print because the back cover says "lewis libby WAS chief of staff for vp dick cheney" and amazon has plenty of copies in stock. ah well, now i guess i have to read it.

i also bought the non-anniversary paperback edition of Infinite Jest for $4.98. ARE YOU PROUD OF ME?!!?!?! i may read it before i turn 35.

I think crazymonk (can we use your real name now that it's in your blurb?) still wins. He bought the hardback for $3 way back when.

i just meant "are you proud of me for finally buying and potentially reading it?"

are you back from your jon-may-world-tour? or just checking in?

I'm always a big fan of people buying and trying to read IJ, so yes I am proud of you. I am currently in Finland (just got back from the sauna). I will give a presentation tomorrow and then I have one more stop, in Amsterdam, before heading home. It never gets dark here. It's really weird.

"you mean the cops knew that internal affairs was setting them up?"

I hate to make an on-topic comment, but here goes:

For those of us working in federal criminal defense, Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence was sort of a good thing. After years of fighting to uphold the reasonableness of the US Sentencing Guidelines, Bush did a 180 and discovered that the sentencing guidelines -- as applied to his good buddy Scooter -- were unduly harsh.

It's magic! And what makes it even more amazing is that the commutation came right after (and contradicts) the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Rita, which held that at that appellate courts should use a presumption of reasonableness for reviewing within-guidelines sentences. Of course, the Attorney General argued vigorously in favor of such a presumption...until the Libby decision.

The hilarity is compounded by the fact that the factors Bush relied on in commuting Libby's sentence -- harsh consequences of the sentence, Libby's long-standing role in working for the public, damages to his reputation and his family, etc. -- are the same ones that his administration has aggressively sought to preclude judges from considering when imposing sentences on everyone else.

The joke around my office is that now public defenders can write a "Libby Motion:" their clients' individual circumstances call for below-guidelines sentencing, just like Libby's did. It probably won't work, but the inconsistency is just too tasty to not point it out to judges.

It's an interesting point, and one that I had a debate about yesterday, but as far as I can tell there are no legal implications of Bush's commutation on judicial sentencing. One merely has to make the argument that the president's authority has no relationship with that of a judge. But I'd like to see someone try.

When was Clinton acquitted? I don't recall that happening.

Clinton should have been impeached and imprisoned for lying under oath. So should Libby. It doesn't matter if you think you have a good justification for it, if it's civil or criminal, if it's someone we like or someone we don't. Every time you lie under oath you attack the legal system's only basis of proper functioning, accurate information.

How hard is it not to lie under oath? Judging by the last two administrations, more difficult than I would have thought.

It's annoying.

Send them both to jail. Put them in the same cell.

Clinton's impeachment was his trial. The vote on his innocence was his acquittal. See, e.g., this CNN headline from 1999: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/impeachment/

Here's a pretty thorough argument for why he didn't commit perjury: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-clintonperjury.html -- I don't exactly agree with every part, but the point is that his perjury was not clear-cut and had legal loopholes, whereas Libby's was rather obvious and indefensible, even w/o resorting to adversarial arguments.

and, not for nothing, rumorsdaily, but clinton's lies under oath (perjury or not) had to do with sex, whereas libby's had to do with government officials putting other government officials in peril. i feel as though this should count for something.

I don't think it is an argument with any legal weight, but I think it is quite tempting to make, if only for the sheer fuck-you pleasure of it.

What a messed-up way to poke a hole in federal sentencing guideline orthodoxy.

Clinton still could have stood trial for perjury in a regular trial. He wasn't acquitted of perjury, he was acquitted of impeachment.

You don't lie under oath, you don't intentionally mislead questioners under oath. Sex, not sex... doesn't matter. We can sentence them differently if you'd like, but they should both go to jail.

Clinton was acquitted of the charges that he was impeached under, including both perjury and obstruction of justice. He didn't get a regular trial because he wasn't a regular person. But under the proper laws and processes of the constitution, he was acquitted, like it or not.

As for intentionally misleading, as that link describes, it is the responsibility of the prosecution to act direct questions. They didn't do so in the Paula Jones trial, and therefore Clinton was able hide details of his personal life. Say what you want, but he did a damn good job of dodging the questions within arguable legal limits. If they had asked, "Has Monica Lewinsky ever touched your bare penis?" he would've been in trouble either way. But they didn't. Having gone through law school, you must know at this point that the burden is on the prosecution to ask the right questions.

i think we can all agree that the whole process would have been a lot more awesome if the questions were along the lines of "has monica lewinsky ever touched your bare penis?"

incidentally, i'm positive his answer would have been "it depends on what your definition of 'touched' is."

Actually, what I learned in law school is that, annoyingly, that sort of technical difference rarely matters. If the person is morally in the wrong, even if they're not wrong on the letter of the law, judges find a way to hold them accountable. I don't particularly like this, but it's what happens.

Admittedly, though, that's more in civil than in criminal cases. We don't do much criminal stuff.

His political trial has no precedential value and there would be no double jeopardy problems from him standing before a regular jury on charges of perjury. He was acquitted of the impeachment charge of perjury, but he could still very well be found guilty of the criminal charge of impeachment (though I'm sure there's some statute of limitations problems at this point).

Side note, that CNN link shows how freaking narrow their old web design was! Look at that.

topically, this law prof dude makes a historical case for post-term impeachment:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonop3.htm

along those lines, marco, i made an appointment for your abortion.