Well, this says quite a lot

From today's White House press briefing (with Scott Stanzel in for a vacationing Tony Snow):

Question: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

Scott Stanzel: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by equal justice under the law.

Catch A Liar; Let Him Go?

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Two Headlines Today: Libby Libby Libby! (and in small print, war with iran...)

I open my emailed version of the NYTimes and see this:

Bush Spares Libby 30-Month Jail Term
By SCOTT SHANE and NEIL A. LEWIS
President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury in the C.I.A. leak case.

U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s
By JOHN F. BURNS and MICHAEL R. GORDON
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said that Iranian agents and veterans of Hezbollah helped plan a raid in Iraq in which five American soldiers were killed.

Meaning everybody's so pissed off at Bush about Libby, they're liable to let him go to war with Iran... (If some are to be believed - and I think there's reason to hear them out: The anti-Iranian press will ramp up; the "incidents" with "Iranian nationals" will increase in frequency and intensity; it's the Spanish-American War/I mean 'Nam/I mean 'Raq all over again...)

But the Libby thing is really a kick in the nards, ain't it?

This from Kenneth L. Adelman, former Defense (originally War) Department official and Libby-liker:

“This is not a man who deserves to go to jail in any sense of the word... Whatever he did wrong, he certainly paid... This is a good person who served his country very well and is a decent person.”

Yes, if a cop caught me smoking rocks on the corner and I was humiliated and talked about in the media (perhaps because I was an important public official), I would not have to go to jail; I'd have served my time via the public spotlight, as it were.

Yes, if I revealed the identity of an American spy... Fuck it, you get the point.

But enough Americans don't seem to get the point about these cheeseball Neocon warmongers. We just love thugs too much. We can't see their bad sides. We don't like em to perjure, to get caught, or say names - but Cheney et Co. can do damn well what he pleases. Who do you think is writing the official version of every incident with Iran?

Here's a little something from the NYTimes' review of T.I.'s new album:

Listeners transfixed by his entertaining interjections (“O.K.?!”) and exaggerated pronunciation might easily have overlooked the rigorous poetic construction. But that’s a neat little quatrain: four lines, six syllables apiece, each building to an trisyllabic oblique rhyme. Somehow, T. I. delivers supertechnical raps without ever sounding as boring as that last sentence.

Supertechnical my ass. He rhymes "attitude" with "dude" (more than once) and talks about beatin folks up. And not ala the Iliad or Biggie's best verses on life as a poor black American, but just in plain, pro-wrestler, prosaically-themed, overly-metered platitudes. He'll beat you up - not make you cry talking about having to beat some guy up to help his mom.

Now, all you really need to know about T.I. for the purposes of this essay is that the man is a low-down, woman-beatin, gay-bashin, drug-smugglin thug. He revels in thuggery. As Mos Def said, "Thug is the drug," and T.I. is one the best-selling rappers in mainstream hip hop, having two albums ago joined the elite pantheon of other woman-beatin, gay-bashin, crack-smokin thug-gods, recently Fifty "Silent 2nd F" Cent and The Game.

Even the Times loves T.I. and can't bring itself to bash him back for all his crack-handin-out evil.

But, worse, we Americans let thugs get into not only our music (instead of reppin real MCs like MF DOOM, LyricsBorn, most of Little Brother, Mos, &c.) but into our government. As much as we balk at Bush's commutation of Scoot's sentence, we should also balk at the Bush plan to invade frickin Persia...

Aiyaiyai, I gotta drink some ice tea and think about something calming, like how much money I owe the government... or how my cat just tried to eat the last of my toilet paper... again...

Make a call

Several prominent Democrats have asked us to call the White House on Tuesday to express our outrage about the Libby pardon. The number is 202-456-1111 - the cowards shut down the comments line and switchboard today, but they can't hide forever. Try to remind them this is America.

Document the Atrocities

It's the end of the week, and what a week it has been!!

For those of us who have been waiting for some justice, for someone in the Bush administration to FINALLY get his ass handed to him, for Patrick Fitzgerald (FITZ!) to tear down the iron curtain of the White House, to see a Neocon head go rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue - then this was the week to savor! Let's take a moment to celebrate I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's GUILTY verdict. 30 years isn't enough for outing a CIA officer (and let's face it, that's what they did) but it's a nice start. Obviously it would have been better to get 5 guilty counts rather than the 4/5 split, but why be greedy when the news is just so sweet? Nobody had more thorough coverage of the trial from beginning to end than Jane Hamsher and her amazing crew at Firedoglake, but Arianna and the folks at Huffington Post scored a HUGE coup with their in-depth and exclusive interview with "Juror Number 9".

Speaking of the Huffington Post, Ankush Khadori conducted an amazing interview with our own Lawrence Wright, which should be read, and can be read here.

Another spectacle in the news this week was the new low set by that horror show Ann Coulter. As of this afternoon, 7 newspapers had dropped that vampire from their roster and several large companies (thank you Verizon) have pulled all their advertising dollars from her website. Even the conservatives are starting to realize that fruit from the poison tree is, well, poison. Although some of the Republican candidates at CPAC last weekend have yet to denounce her hateful homophobia (hello, Rudy??). Even dear old Dick seems to have forgotten he begat one of those "faggots" Ann so lovingly refers to. Poor Mary Cheney. Poor Mary Cheney's illegitimate child (pray for them). How will Grandpa ever explain to that child his deafening silence while all his close conservative pals condemned the very existence of his daughter and future grandchild? So sad when conservatives eat their own.

Speaking of Rudy, if you haven't heard the one about how the Associated Press got conned into quoting the head of "Firefighters for Rudy" in a major story this week, you just gotta let the folks at Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo tell you all about it.

It's nearly impossible to keep on top of all the Bush scandals this week much less throughout the last 6 years. But somehow that ditzy octagenarian David Gergen seems to have found a way.

It just seems like those Republican conservatives can't catch a break! Earlier this week at CPAC they honored a former military hero, Matt Sanchez. All those giddy neocons just couldn't wait to get their picture taken with the strapping young hispanic vet. Until they discovered his night job - as a gay male porn star. OOPS !! (By the way, I just heart John Aravosis and Americablog. It's the first thing I read every morning and the last I read at night. Can't live without him).

But without question, the most horrific, outrageous ongoing story was documented this week during the Congressional hearings on the Walter Reed debacle. I can barely contain my anger at these people - how dare they campaign and preach about "supporting our troops" while they destroy them in every conceivable way? Forget about putting them in an unwinnable, untenable situation. Forget about not giving them the body armor or sufficient weaponry to do their job. Forget about sending them to this insane war in the first place. But when they come home, wounded, sick, depressed, suicidal - how dare this administration refuse them proper care?! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN ?!?!

Well, after that sombering news, I thought I'd end on an up note. It really does make a difference when Democrats are in charge. Yesterday Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats announced plans for a BINDING resolution to start bringing home the troops in 120 days. Bush says he'll veto it - Nancy Pelosi says "who cares?". It may be good to be King, but it's damn good to be the Majority Leader and Speaker of the friggin' house!

Have a good weekend !!