Rogue Trial, Rogue Sentencing

RUSH: It is unbelievable. It’s been a rogue trial, and now this is a rogue sentencing. Thirty months, two and a half years for Scooter Libby on a case where no charge was ever brought related to the original investigation. Meanwhile, while Scooter Libby is going to jail for 30 months, if he ever sees the inside of a cell — there’s some question about that. The appeal process could go on for awhile. While Scooter Libby is sentenced to two and a half years in jail, all kinds of people crossing the border of this country illegally are going to be forgiven for it, if the Senate bill ever becomes law, amnesty. Of course, then we have Sandy Burglar who committed a real crime and got a slap on the wrist, loses his law license, and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. Greetings, my friends, welcome. It’s the Rush Limbaugh program, and we are here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. Three hours straight ahead for you, the telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the e-mail address.

It’s uncertain. This just happened right before show time. I am trying to keep track of all of this even while hosting the program. I can multitask, but so far I haven’t heard anything other than speculation as to whether or not Scooter will be allowed to remain free during the appeals process. He’s appealing the original conviction and will appeal the sentencing as well. If he’s allowed to remain free, this appeals process could go on for a year and a half. It could take him to the end of the Bush administration. The question of a pardon, people keep asking whether or not President Bush will pardon Scooter Libby. The president said he’s staying out of this until all of the appeals processes have been concluded. So there may not be any adjudication on this, as far as a pardon is concerned, until the appeals process is done. That all depends on whether Scooter has to go to jail immediately or whether he’s allowed to remain free during the appeals process. If I know Patrick Fitzfong, he’s going to push for immediate incarceration. It remains to be seen. One of the things about it, if Scooter is sent to jail early, that becomes a problem for the president and a pardon. It’s technically — well, not technically — historically presidents are much less reluctant to pardon people who are in prison than those who are not, although you could say it’s a rule of thumb, but it actually isn’t. It just seems like the whole thing was surreal. There was no charge. The leaking of Valerie Plame, the real liars and the people who obstructed justice, made a mockery of it, are living free in Santa Fe, New Mexico, preparing to write a book, Valerie Plame and her esteemed husband, Joseph Wilson.

Look at Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana). The Democrats are circling the wagons just as I said. I’ve got a story here from the AP. They’re all concerned what will happen to the people of New Orleans, ‘Oh, no, they’re still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Oh, my gosh, we can’t take away the most powerful congressman during this period of time.’ It’s an AP story about this. You’ve got Jefferson, federal indictment, 16 counts, they’ve got him on videotape taking bribes, offering bribes, they’ve got $90,000 in cash. It took them all this time to come down with the indictment. Meanwhile, DeLay was thrown out office on a hack prosecution simply because the Republicans in another one of their brilliant and esteemed moments when they assumed control of the House, Republicans, eager to show America that they are clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, and eager to show that they would run the House with great magnanimity, blah, blah, blah, pass a stupid rule that said if any of their leadership were ever indicted, that member would automatically be forced to step down, resign his post in the leadership of the House. Of course, that happened to DeLay, the old Ronnie Earle indictment.

I’m telling you, folks, conservatives are the targets, and in Washington, DC, even with Republican appointed judges, there are two sets of standards for justice and criminality. To me, it’s just rogue, a rogue trial, a rogue sentencing. The judge didn’t let Scooter bring in his own experts on memory. They wanted to bring in some experts on memory loss and so forth. What’s amazing about this is that the judge — and, by the way, I’m not surprised at this. A lot of people are. I read some things earlier this week, late last week from people who have been analyzing this. The judge is going to have to be lenient with Scooter because the judge has seen all the classified documents, and he has seen all of the great work that Scooter Libby has done in the defense of this country. His daily agenda would exhaust an average triathlete, and the judge has got to see this, the judge has got to know that Scooter Libby has done great things for this country, performed a great service, never had any run-ins with the law, blah, blah, blah. I said, it isn’t going to matter. Isn’t going to matter. Said to myself, none of that’s going to matter. Fitzfong went out there demanding three years in jail and so forth. The way the judge has run the trial, what happened today is perfectly consistent with the way the whole trial went. Why, anybody would think that there would be a vast difference in direction on the part of the judge at the sentencing is beyond me, I think wishful thinking. At any rate, that’s what it is. We’ll wait to find out if the judge will allow Scooter to remain free during the appeals process. That seems to be the conventional wisdom right now that he will be.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have just established a new caucus in the House of Representatives, the Kickback Caucus. Congressman William Jefferson is now the new chairman of the Kickback Caucus. (Laughing.) They reward this kind of stuff. Pelosi tearing their hair out, all these people, ‘Oh, what will I do about Congressman Jefferson? I want to pull him out,’ but the Congressional Black Caucus, ‘Not so fast, babe, not so fast. Innocent until proven guilty. You’re not going to strip him of his committee,’ and then these stories about the people of New Orleans will suffer so much if their most powerful member of Congress is taken away from them. Oh, pity, pity, pity. In the meantime, by the way, unbeknownst to most because it doesn’t get reported, there are real rifts between Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus. It’s one of the reasons why the Democrats are so eager to get all these illegal aliens legalized so they can become voters eventually down the road. I have a couple stories about the problems in the Democrat Party. You don’t hear much about them, but they’re there, and we’ll spend some time dissecting them.

Richard Armitage, the original leaker in the Plame case, he gets no time. Why, he didn’t even get a subpoena. (interruption) What do you mean, asking me about Armitage? What are you doing wasting my time bringing up real facts in this case? This is a rogue case. I know Armitage was the original leaker. This is a rogue case. It’s a rogue trial. It’s a rogue sentencing. That’s what makes all of this so surreal. Then you throw all this other stuff — look at Murtha. You’ve got Nancy Pelosi appointing Murtha, tried to appoint him to her leadership committee. That didn’t fly. I think it’s a bit of a public display of angst on her part, want to have to get rid of Congressman William Jefferson, because the fact of the matter is Democrats are trying to make this claim that the culture of corruption was something owned exclusively by the Republicans. So she kind of caught between a rock and a hard place with Congressman William Jefferson now chairman of the Kickback Caucus, a prominent Democrat. There were a lot of news stories that didn’t even mention his political party. That’s why I keep hammering to you people when I refer to this man as Congressman William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana) because a bunch of stories don’t even mention his political party. Dianne Feinstein’s business is not being pursued, the stuff with her husband. So many double standards here. We will explore them all.