Give Scooter Libby a New Job

Conservatives have not been very happy with President Bush lately because of his support for immigration reform and his apparent disregard for the fate of Scooter Libby. Although his commutation of Libby's sentence should reassure the President's base, many conservatives believe that the President did not go far enough. I think the President needs to do more to win back the base and I have an idea that will do just that.

Many were shocked by the harsh sentence that Judge Reggie Walton gave Libby. To give him a sentence that was within the sentencing guidelines was to treat him like a crack dealer or some other common criminal. It sent a terrible message to those who criticize the administration that no one can do anything to stop them without risking jail time. In his statement commuting the sentence President Bush called the sentence "excessive." But oddly the President did not pardon Libby and he did not absolve him of having to pay a hefty $250,000 fine.

Ed Morrissey, who was not very happy with President's immigration bill and wanted Congress "to find a solution that respects the rule of law," compared the President to Solomon. "In opting for commutation, Bush has attempted a Solomonic decision to split the baby," Morrissey wrote. "Unfortunately, like Solomon, Bush will probably find neither side satisfied." Although I agree with Morrissey that Bush is as wise as Solomon, I'm not sure he is interpreting the biblical story correctly. As I recall one of two women who claimed the baby was perfectly happy to settle for half a baby and it was only the real mother that objected. To tell you the truth I never understood why the other woman thought having half a baby was a pretty good deal, but I guess times were different back then. Morrissey thinks that half a baby is all the President could give Libby for now.

Ace of Spades, who in post after post rallied his readers to jam the phone lines of their congressmen to protest the "amnesty bill" for illegal immigrants, was glad that the President ended what he called a "silly fantasia." However, he thinks that the $250,000 fine should have been lowered to something more reasonable. Undeclared presidential candidate Fred Thompson said he was "happy" for Libby though he had "urged for a pardon." Thompson, who was on Libby's defense fund, had also split with the President on immigration, saying that illegal immigrants from Cuba are potential terrorists. Glenn Reynolds, who thought the immigration bill sent a message to legal immigrants that "laws are for suckers" predicted that Bush would rise in the polls as some conservatives rallied to his side for commuting Libby's sentence. Michelle Malkin who has excoriated the President over what she called "shamnesty" for illegal immigrants has been largely silent on the Libby case.

If Bush wants to win back the Republican base, there is something he could do that would win them over on both the immigration issue and on justice for Scooter Libby. He could appoint Libby as the new Immigration Czar and give him sweeping new powers to ruthlessly enforce the rule of law. Working with Federal and local law enforcement, Libby's new agency could round up illegal immigrants that break our laws just by being here. At the same time his recent experience with the legal system would give him the compassion and discretion necessary to deal leniently with the small businessmen and homeowners who just needed workers for their restaurants and factories and day laborers to tend their gardens and lawns. And the annual salary for this new job should be $250,000, which would take care of Libby's fine. With this bold move, the President would be killing two halves of the baby with one stone, something even Solomon couldn't manage. It would send a powerful message that the President does not condone law-breaking unless it is absolutely necessary for national security. That's a clear message that I think conservatives could rally around.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Cheney, Scooter Libby, Bush, Immigration, Politics

Brown v Board of Education's Original Intent

In his confirmation hearings Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed his support of Brown v. The Board of Education, a decision that has often been misinterpreted by judicial activists. Finally, more than 50 years after the Brown decision, Justice Roberts has revealed in his opinion for the 5-4 majority in Parents Involved v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 what Brown really meant. "Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," he wrote of the cruel injustice of white children being told they could not attend the black schools of their choice. In the wake of Brown liberals only compounded this injustice by forcing black children to go to school with white children even if they didn't want to. In the name of equality hardly anyone got to attend the schools of their choice. Although the decision in Parents Involved generated 185 pages of opinions, Roberts has conveniently boiled down the true meaning of Brown in a sentence that could fit on a bumper sticker: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.''

Brown v. The Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson which upheld the segregation of railroad cards based on the doctrine of "separate but equal." But Brown had the inadvertent effect of replacing this doctrine with an even more unfair policy: "together but unequal." Black children were forced to attend white schools where they couldn't possible compete and white children where forced to attend black schools where they weren't challenged enough. Parents were horrified that their children had become pawns in social experiments that tried to force equality and integration. Many parents responded understandably to forced busing of their children by throwing rocks at buses carrying other people's children.

The Brown decision, perhaps more than any other event in our history, gave rise to the modern conservative movement. In writing about Brown in his book Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater said, "In effect the Court said that what matters is not the ideas of the men who wrote the Constitution, but the Court's ideas. It was only by engrafting its own ideas on the law of the land that the Court was able to reach the decision it did….I am therefore not impressed that the Supreme Court's decision on school integration is the law of the land" William Buckley's National Review also denounced the decision at the time. And future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a memo in 1952 urging the Court to do the right thing. "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by 'liberal' colleagues but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed," wrote Rehnquist, who would stay true to his ideals and make a lot of unpopular and unhumanitarian decisions. If it weren't for Brown, there might be no modern conservative movement.

But like all conservatives Justice Roberts is a great respecter of the principle of stare decisis and did not want to overturn an important precedent like Brown after more than 50 years (although the Warren Court apparently felt no such compunction in overturning Plessy). So instead, he went back to the original intent of the decision, which was that the government should be completely colorblind. If many schools have become resegregated in the half century since Brown, then the government is totally blind to this outcome. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in his dissent, quoting Anatole France, "The majestic equality of the law, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." Under the Roberts court the government gives black students and white students the same freedom to go to dilapidated segregated schools if they want to.

If parents don't want their children attending segregated schools, then the have the freedom of choice to move to another district, earn enough money to send their kids to private schools or quit their jobs and homeschool their kids. Other parents, on the other hand, may prefer that their children attend segregated schools. "People -- black, white, brown, rich, middle-class, poor, Christian, secular, etc. -- naturally want to be around people like themselves. Why is that such a bad thing?" conservative Rod Dreher recently wrote. He points to a study by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam that shows that "the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone." The recent conservative uprising over immigration legislation was a warning to politicians that conservatives do not want to be forced to listen to salsa music and be subjected to the pungent odors of Mexican cooking in their own neighborhoods, because that will only make them trust their Spanish-speaking neighbors less, especially since they can't understand a word they are saying.

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Judge Stephen Breyer said in an angry dissent from the bench. But all Justice Roberts has done is return to the original intent of Brown, changing things back to the status quo. In coming years I think we will see the Court returning to the original intent of a number of decisions. Hopefully, we will return to the original intent of Roe v. Wade, which affirmed that the government does have the right to restrict abortion, the original intent of Griswold v. Connecticut, which granted only married couples the right to privacy and the original intent of Marbury v. Madison, which affirmed that the Supreme Court only has the power to interpret the original intent of the Founding Fathers not make up its own interpretations.

I hope that the Roberts Court will also return the original intent of legislation that has been distorted over the years. It made some strides in this direction in another decision the Court issued yesterday, which stripped away 96 years of misinterpretations of anti-trust laws and returned back to the original intent of the law. If Justice Roberts Court succeeds in his efforts to wrest control of the judiciary away from the radical judicial activists, this country will be returned back to the original vision of the Founding Fathers and the last 200 years or so will just seem like a bad dream.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court,John Roberts, Original Intent, Parents Involved, Politics

I Am Paris Hilton

At the end of the film Spartacus a Roman general stands before a great multitude of slaves captured after their failed rebellion and demands that their leader, Spartacus, identify himself to face execution. Spartacus steps forward and says, "I am Spartacus!" but then one by one the other slaves come forward as well and cry out, "I am Spartacus!" "No, I am Spartacus!" until everyone in the crowd is echoing his name.

In Los Angeles a judge ordered Paris Hilton to come before him and just like those Roman slaves in Spartacus, I, along with millions of Americans, cry out, "I am Paris Hilton!"

What has always made America different from other countries is that every citizen has an equal opportunity to become rich or, at least, to inherit great wealth. That is the American dream. That is why most Americans oppose high taxes for the wealthy and death taxes because they know that someday they might be well off themselves.

But the tragic saga of Paris Hilton has shattered that dream. How can we possibly have faith in the American system of justice when we see that despite having access to the best lawyers money can buy, Paris Hilton can be treated so cruelly? What hope do we have for the future when we see that even if we become a wealthy celebrity, we might still be subject to the harsh vagaries of the law.

First they came for Paris Hilton and I did not speak up because I was not Paris Hilton.

Well, I am speaking up now because I am Paris Hilton!

Who among us cannot imagine ourselves in Paris Hilton's Manolo Blahnik pumps? It does not stretch the imagination to see ourselves driving our Bentley to buy a cheeseburger late at night and getting pulled over for the second time in less than a year and charged with driving without a license after it was suspended for driving while intoxicated. There but for the grace of God, go I.

The judge in Paris Hilton's case, Michael Sauer, has declared class warfare. If our courts start treating rich and poor equally, what will be left to strive for? People will start believing that justice should just be given away for free. It will become yet another entitlement. When the haves become indistinguishable from the have-nots, we are all have-nots. On a level playing field no one can rise to the top because there is no top to rise to, just one long valley.

I am especially shocked at how some of my fellow conservatives have suddenly joined the ranks of class warriors. "Pardon me for injecting a little conservative thought into all of this, but I have very little sympathy for Ms. Hilton," said Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, sounding more like a Bolshevik than a real conservative. "She has had all of the advantages possible in society, and has shown herself contemptuous to any sense of responsibility." Andrew Sullivan seems positively gleeful at her plight. "Whoever doesn't feel an ounce of pleasure at the sight of this mega-rich non-entity finally being treated with a modicum of justice has surely lost the capacity to feel anything," he says. Jules Crittenden gets it right when he says this is all about "class warfare" but then shockingly invokes the hoariest liberal clap-trap, writing, "Like the lefties like to say about murderers, rapists, etc., society made her what she is." There is something very wrong with the heart of conservatism today when the words of our greatest conservative thinkers are indistinguishable from those of Al Sharpton or a Marxist university professor. Even John Podhoretz seems more confused than usual.

As one of Podhoretz's readers tries in vain to point out, illegal aliens are treated better than Paris Hilton and they shouldn't have any rights at all. Her crack team of expensive lawyers has been reduced to the desperate legal ploy of filing a writ of habeas corpus, as if Paris Hilton were some kind of terrorist. Our system of justice is certainly broken when an American citizen has nothing left to turn to but this outdated legal maneuver, which I thought had been suspended. Habeas corpus literally means "have the body" and I don't need to point out the sad irony of such a phrase being invoked in Hilton's case. Meanwhile, one Paris Hilton fansite believes her civil rights have been violated and says that the judge may be in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act for retaliating against her because she is "mentally upset."

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, one must have a heart of stone to read of the incarceration of little Paris Hilton without weeping. "Mom, Mom. It's not right," she cried when a judge ordered her back to jail to spend 45 harrowing days with people who can only afford public defenders. "And after all the money we spent," said Hilton's outraged mother at her sentencing. If this is the kind of society we live in, then we might as well all be making the minimum wage.

If this travesty of justice is allowed to stand, then someday it could be you or me. If Paris Hilton is just one of us, then someday we might all be Paris Hilton. That is why I step forward today and proudly proclaim, "I am Paris Hilton!"

Photo of Paris Hilton by Nick Ut, who took this picture 35 years ago to the day after he snapped this Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a napalmed Vietnamese girl. If that isn't an example of the American Dream, I don't know what is.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Paris Hilton, Celebrities, Ed Morrissey, Andrew Sullivan, Jules Crittenden, Conservatives, Law, Politics

Scooter Libby's Halloween

Does Judge Reggie Walton have a heart of stone? Reading the sentencing letters written by Scooter Libby's friends, how could one not be moved? If a man can be judged by the friends he has, then it is difficult to look harshly on someone who numbers among his friends such stalwart men of impeccable reputations as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, John Bolton, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. (Vice President Dick Cheney did not get around to writing a letter for his former aide, but I'm sure he was very busy.)

It is beyond me how Judge Walton could ignore the pleadings of Henry Kissinger, for example, who wrote, "Having served in the White House and under pressure, I have seen how difficult it sometimes is to recall precisely a particular series of events." Just think of all the deeds that Kissinger has had to block from his mind and you can see that Libby's small lapses of memory were minor in comparison. Paul Wolfowitz wrote about how Libby worked late into the night to protect the identity of a covert CIA agent, whose name had not yet been leaked to Robert Novak. But there was no more affecting letter than the one written by Mary Matalin and signed by her husband James Carville, who apparently was so moved by Libby's plight that he was willing to sacrifice all credibility he will ever have with Democrats.

Matalin tells us of an occasion when she accompanied the Cheney family to one of the "undisclosed locations" they had to escape to in order to flee from the terrorists:

"One of my many enduring and endearing memories of Scooter is of his universal love of families. While on one of our early "undisclosed location" work trips (which were always driven by unfolding threatening events and were therefore unscheduled and unanticipated by our families and us), coincided with Halloween, which I am sure you know is the favorite event of most children's lives. The Cheney grandchildren were required to accompany us on this particular trip, yanked out of school and away from their much-awaited night of Trick or Treating. Their disappointment at being trapped in the desolate, nothing-to-do location was heartbreaking, as was our own, missing our small children that night. While I was working up a pretty annoying whine, Scooter flew into action, finding treats, creating costumes and arranged an ad-hoc trick-or-treat and Halloween games for the kids. This was no small undertaking given our removed location and minimal resources. It took hours of creative effort on his part. And when the little ones finally trotted off to bed full of candy and stories, Scooter went back to work, as was always the case, late into the night."

It is an image I will not soon forget: Scooter Libby in a remote military installation scaring children. Matalin does not tell us what kind of Halloween costumes Libby found or what kind of scary stories he told, but I already have a picture in my mind. I imagine Matalin in a witch costume, Carville dressed as a scarecrow and Libby playing Death, dressed in long black robes and a black hood with only his eyes visible when the candlelight hit them in the dark caverns of the secret underground military installation. Dick Cheney probably wore a Dick Cheney mask.

How the children must have screamed with delight as he regaled them with frightening tales of the torture chambers of petty dictators, mushroom clouds in American cities and liberals hiding under their beds. I can almost hear their piercing screams when he shouted, "It's coming from inside the house!" It must have brought him great joy to see them shiver with fright as he told them of villages reduced to rubble, burying some of the inhabitants alive while others dragged themselves through the destruction like zombies with missing limbs and eyeballs hanging from their sockets. Or perhaps he read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," looking slightly mad as he told them of the murdered man's heart beating "louder! louder! louder! LOUDER!" and the guilty protagonist's agonized confession: "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

As he looked into the eyes of the children, giddy with terror, munching on the bits of candy he was able to scrape up from military rations, I'm sure he thought of the poor little children halfway across the world in Iraq who would not be celebrating Halloween that night because they lived under the yoke of a dictator in a benighted society that knew nothing of the joys of Halloween. They lived in a place where children were deprived of the pleasure of going from house to house once a year to beg for candy or of being scared to death by tales of terror. When he went back to work that night, I'm sure he toiled with a renewed vigor, as he dedicated himself selflessly to his mission--to bring Halloween to all the children of the world.

"Kids are the most true and honest evaluators of people," Matalin wrote in her letter, documenting the devastating toll the prosecution of "Mr. Scooter," as her children called him, has had on her family. I hope that Judge Walton will reconsider the harsh sentence he has imposed on Scooter Libby or that President Bush will pardon him. I hope that they will think of the children.

Photo by A Look Askance.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Cheney, Scooter Libby, Mary Matalin, James Carville, Henry Kissinger, Halloween, Iraq, Politics