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MySA.com: Bob Richter: E-N was as critical of Clinton’s pardons as Bush’s communtation

Several readers who called or e-mailed me last week may have spoken for scores of other like-minded partisans who thought the Express-News’ news coverage and commentary on the Scooter Libby story was unfair.

“You’re trying to make hay out of something that’s just grass,” W.J. Simonsen of Fredericksburg said of the Thursday editorial “Commuting sentence for Libby a final excess.”

“What about Clinton? He commuted some of the biggest criminals and ne’er-do-wells this country has known in a long time,” Simonsen said, referring to the 140 lucky men and women whose sentences President Clinton expunged on his last day in the White House.

Among them were Henry Cisneros, ex-San Antonio mayor and Clinton Cabinet member, Hearst Corp. heiress Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw and Marc Rich, a Democratic Party financier and billionaire who fled the United States in 1984 after being charged with tax fraud and illegal trading.

I appreciate that Bob Richter took the time to dispute reader charges that the Express News wasn’t as critical of Clinton’s pardons as they have been about Libby’s commutation but I think it is missing the point. Clinton didn’t pardon anyone whose crime he was party to. That is the difference right there and that is why it is offensive. There is simply no comparison. Someone was a danger to the White House’s fear machine and so they outed his wife to shut him up. They did real damage because that is the kind of people they are and of course they commuted the sentence of their scapegoat because again that is the kind of people they are.

I really don’t understand people who think that anyone actions justify another’s. It just makes no sense. I am sure your mom told you that two wrongs don’t make a right so stop the bellyaching about who did what 10 years ago and look at the facts of what is happening today.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Cheney, Libby, Clinton, Pardon, commutation

Filed under: Commutation, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush