I can’t help but blog about this. It’s just so history-making.
The vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby was convicted of four felonies Tuesday, becoming the first White House employee convicted of a felony since Spiro Agnew, who was the highest official working in the White House ever convicted of a felony. Thus, it is accurate to say that Scooter Libby was the first White House felon in American history since Agnew.
Scooter was also a muppet.
Libby was also the first White House official to be indicted while in office in 130 years (the last was Orville E. Babcock, who served as the private secretary for President Ulysses S. Grant and was charged in a conspiracy to pocket whiskey taxes, then pardoned by Grant.)
Many speculate President Bush will follow the lead of Grant, as well as George Sr., and pardon criminals in his administration right before leaving office. I hope Libby doesn’t get off that easy.
But let’s take a broader view most blogs aren’t taking. Let’s look at all Republican administrations for the past 50 years. (Despite lots of noise, there were no felony convictions among top Clinton officials).
This is so much bigger, and much more serious, than some “Scooter” guy. This is a deep spiritual and cultural undercurrent in America.
The last Republican White House that didn’t have serious felony convictions was…when? Hoover? Eisenhower?
When will people wake up and realize there is something inherently corrupt in the core of the Republican party and they should be abandoned?
Why don’t they see that the core philosophy that government is bad and should not regulate anything leads to a climate of disregard for the law? If you think government is illegitimate and part of the problem, you will tend to step over any rules.
People in the Nixon Administration were jailed for Watergate. People in the Reagan and Bush I Administrations were jailed for illegal gun-running to Iran to illegally fund Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. People in the George W. Bush Administration will be jailed for overstepping the CIA rules to smear a political opponent (Plame Affair) and maybe they’ll also get in trouble for the far more serious allegations that they’re illegally funding Jihadists in Lebanon. What these administrations have in common is a “no-holds barred” approach.
What’s it take to get these crooks banned?
I’m already hearing stuff like “yeah, Bush was bad but the next Republican administration will be GREAT” and it MAKES ME WANT TO SCREAM!! History shows the next Republican administration will be just as enthusiastically devoted to advancing authoritarian powers, the rules (or people in the way) be damned, as this Republican administration, and the Reagan / Bush Sr. administrations (Iran/Contra) and the Nixon administration (Watergate).
Even on a non-ideological, purely practical “I don’t want corrupt government” level, the GOP should be sidelined by voters until they’ve proven they can stay ethically clean.
Nick