posted July 04, 2007 10:00 AM              

However,this may be the problem. Here in the commutation form you see it states in the beginning to "read this carefully" before submitting the form. Since we all know that Bush either doesn't read or can't read due to his having the attention span of a gnat, that may be where the problem lies in his continuing to violate the laws of the land and the Constitution.

In a sane world he would have been impeached long ago along with Cheney. I am totally disgusted with this government and the do nothing Congress which is equally to blame. Once again I have gotten deluged with petitions from every organization in the country calling for impeachment and letters from Democrats complaining about it. Why? Nothing has been done so far. There was not even a squawk from any of these people over the presidential directives of May where Bush out and out declared himself dictator over anything he deems a national emergency.

Information and Instructions on Commutations and Remissions
Please Read Carefully Before Completing Commutation Form

1. Submit the petition to the Office of the Pardon Attorney

All petitions for commutation of sentence should be forwarded to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice. The completed commutation petition must be entirely legible; therefore, please type or print in ink. The form must be completed fully and accurately in order to be considered. You may attach to the petition additional pages and documents that amplify or clarify your answer to any question.

2. Federal convictions only

Under the Constitution, the President has the authority to commute sentences for federal criminal convictions, which are those obtained in the United States District Courts. In addition, the President's clemency power extends to convictions obtained in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. However, the President cannot commute a state criminal sentence. Accordingly, if you are seeking clemency for a state criminal conviction, you should not complete and submit this petition. Instead, you should contact the Governor or other appropriate authorities of the state where you were convicted (such as the state board of pardons and paroles) to determine whether any relief is available to you under state law.

3. Reduction of sentence only

The President's clemency power includes the authority to commute, or reduce, a sentence imposed upon conviction of a federal offense, including the authority to remit, or reduce, the amount of a fine or restitution order that has not already been paid. This form of clemency is different from a pardon after completion of sentence. Under the current regulations governing petitions for executive clemency, a person may not apply for a full pardon until at least five years after his or her release from incarceration. Accordingly, the commutation form should be used only for the purpose of seeking a reduction of sentence.

4. Completion of court challenges

Requests for commutation of a prison sentence generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence. In addition, commutation requests are generally not accepted from a person who is currently challenging his or her conviction or sentence through appeal or other court proceeding. Accordingly, you should not complete and submit this petition until you have concluded all judicial challenges to your conviction and sentence and you have begun serving your sentence. You should also be aware that, in evaluating the merits of a commutation petition, clemency authorities take into consideration the amount of time the petitioner has already served and the availability of other remedies to secure the relief sought (such as parole or judicial action).

5. Special assessment

Requests for the remission of a special assessment are not accepted. The special assessment is not considered to be a fine, and should not be included in describing any fine that might have been imposed upon you.

6. Commutation of probation, supervised release, or special parole.

If you are seeking reduction of a period of probation, supervised release, or special parole, you should state that specifically on the form and set forth the particular reasons why this portion of your sentence should be reduced, including the reasons that being on probation, supervised release, or special parole would be an unusual hardship for you. You should also explain why requesting the sentencing court to grant early termination of a term of supervision, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1) or 18 U.S.C. § 4211, is not an adequate remedy.

7. Immigration status

If you are not a citizen of the United States, you should be aware that commutation of your sentence only shortens the prison sentence and will not result in a change of your immigration status. A full pardon is the only form of executive clemency that might affect a person's immigration status; however, as noted in paragraph 3 above, a person who is currently serving a prison term is not eligible to apply for that form of relief. Accordingly, if a detainer has been lodged against you for deportation or removal, commutation of sentence, even if granted, will not prevent your deportation or removal from the United States and may actually hasten the process. You may wish to contact the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is the agency responsible for decisions regarding a person's immigration status, to determine whether any other relief from deportation or removal is available to you.

8. Additional criminal record

In response to question 6, you must disclose any additional arrest or charge by any civilian or military law enforcement authority, including any federal, state, local, or foreign authority, whether it occurred before or after the offense for which you are seeking commutation. Your answer should list every violation, including traffic violations that resulted in an arrest or criminal charge, such as driving under the influence. You should also include all convictions, whether or not they were counted in computing your criminal history category under the Sentencing Guidelines. Your failure to disclose any arrest, whether or not it resulted in a conviction, and every conviction may be considered a false statement.

9. Penalty for false statements

The failure to fully and accurately complete the application form may be construed as a falsification of the petition, which may provide a reason for denying your petition. In addition, the intentional falsification of a document submitted to the government may subject you to criminal punishment, including up to five years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 and 3571.

10. Exclusive Presidential authority

The power to commute a sentence for a federal offense is vested in the President alone. It is an extraordinary remedy that is very rarely granted. No hearing is held on the commutation application by either the Department of Justice or the White House. You will be notified when a final decision is made on your petition, and there is no appeal from the President's decision to deny a clemency request. The Office of the Pardon Attorney does not disclose information regarding the nature or results of any investigation that may have been undertaken in a particular case, or the exact point in the clemency process at which a particular petition is pending at a given time. As a matter of well-established policy, the specific reasons for the President's decision to grant or deny a petition are generally not disclosed by either the White House or the Department of Justice. In addition, documents reflecting deliberative communications pertaining to presidential decision-making, such as the Department's recommendation to the President in a clemency matter, are confidential and not available under the Freedom of Information Act. If your petition is denied, you may reapply one year after the date of denial.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
To Applicants for Commutation of Sentence

The following notice is provided pursuant to the Privacy Act of 1974 to help you to understand what is involved in petitioning for executive clemency and why we need to obtain certain information about you.

The information that we request from you on the accompanying commutation of sentence application form, and in any ensuing background investigation, is needed to help provide the basis for an informed judgment about whether you should be granted clemency. This is our only purpose in asking you to complete and sign the application. You are under no obligation to furnish any information. However, if you do not provide all the information requested, we may be unable to process your application. Failure to provide your Social Security number will not prejudice your case.

Our authority for requesting the information solicited in the accompanying commutation of sentence application form is the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2 (the pardon clause); Order No. 1798-93, 58 Fed. Reg. 53658 and 53659 (1993), codified in 28 C.F.R. §§ 1.1 et seq. (the rules governing petitions for executive clemency); and Order of the Attorney General No. 1012-83, 48 Fed. Reg. 22290 (1983), as codified in 28 C.F.R. §§ 0.35 and 0.36 (the authority of the Office of the Pardon Attorney).

Upon specific request, we advise anyone who asks whether a named person has been granted or denied clemency. In addition, the pendency of an application is confirmed to anyone who asks, unless extraordinary considerations of privacy are presented in a particular case that outweigh the public interest in having access to this information. If you believe such privacy considerations are present in your case, you should so inform us in writing when you submit the application.

Executive clemency files are compiled and maintained to assist the President in exercising his constitutional clemency power and are routinely made available to him, members of his staff, and other government officials concerned with clemency proceedings. The Pardon Attorney may disclose the contents of executive clemency files to anyone when the disclosure is required by law or the ends of justice. In particular, public record documents that may be compiled in the course of processing a clemency application, such as the judgment order from the criminal case for which commutation is sought, trial or sentencing transcripts, court opinions, and newspaper articles, are generally made available upon request by third-parties (including representatives of the news media) pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, unless such disclosure could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the petitioner's personal privacy. In addition, unsolicited Congressional correspondence is treated in the same manner. On the other hand, non-public documents that may be compiled in the course of processing a clemency application, such as the petition and supporting documents, the presentence investigation report, the results of any background investigation, and the report and recommendation of the Department of Justice to the President, are not generally available under the Freedom of Information Act.

The foregoing rules apply to the disclosure of documents in the possession of the Department of Justice. However, the President and his immediate staff are not subject to the constraints of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts. Accordingly, while clemency-related documents in the possession of the White House traditionally have not been made public, they may be legally disclosed at the discretion of the President. In addition, clemency-related documents retained by the White House at the end of a presidential administration will become part of the President's official library, where they become subject to the disclosure provisions of the Presidential Records Act.

posted July 04, 2007 02:07 PM            

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CIA_LEAK_QUOTES ?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-07-02-20-24-17

I had to edit this, but it's still a good piece.
(because of copyright laws)

Jwhop

posted July 05, 2007 01:15 PM            

God, what hypocrisy.

This is a list of those Clinton pardoned which includes bank robbers, drug dealers...including Clinton's own source of cocaine..and his brothers, terrorists who had killed police officers in New York and a long list of embezzlers, crocks, con men, perjurers and the general sleazey which would appeal to someone like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

There were pardons for money in this list as well...as in the case of Marc Rich..and others
http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/clintonpardon_grants.htm

posted July 06, 2007 02:36 AM            

jwhop,

You are absolutely right and I hope people take the time to actually read the backgrounds of those that Clinton let go on pardons. It is sickening.. I am not EVEN going to get into what Sandy Berger did with our National secrets... freaking stuffing crap in his socks = loser

------------------
Welcome back from the Sandbox Bear...I love you...Forever and a Day....

www.IMWITHFRED.com

posted July 06, 2007 11:25 AM            

Sandy Burgler burglers the National Archives, steals top secret documents, exposes them to theft by foreign intelligence forces then takes home for shredding those with notes on the margins...to protect Commander Corruption and fails to return any of them. Later, Burgler gets caught in the act and confesses.

That's espionage against the Untited States as well as felony theft.

For that, Sandy Burgler gets probation, gets a fine and a suspension of his security clearance for 2 years. Big deal.

Scooter Libby has a disagreement/memory squabble over who revealed the identity of Valary Plame to him...i.e., Tim Russert, as an employee of the CIA and gets sentenced to prison and a big fine.

Valary Plame was not a "secret agent" of the CIA. No crime was committed by anyone revealing her name or employment but it turns out the leftist twits not only got the leak source wrong but got the reason for the leak wrong as well.

Time and events proved...by confession of the party...that Richard Armitage leaked Plames name and employment not Scooter Libby. Armitage was not prosecuted at all...no crime was committed.

Leftist twits insisted the Bush administration leaked the information about Plame to silence her husband Joe Wilson...a war critic of the administration who was on a lying spree in the press and broadcast media.

Far from the truth as is usual for leftist twits of the news media, members of Congress and leftist twits at large.

Richard Armitage was a critic of the Iraq war...not a supporter of Bush or administration policies. In fact Armitage worked for Colin Powell...also not a supporter of the Iraq War...but Powell understood the State Department was not organized or authorized to set US Foreign Policy. So, Powell protested quietly and privately in meetings with Bush and other administration officials...exactly as he and everyone in the Executive Branch should do if they disagree with basic policy....or resign...the honorable thing to do.

It should be noted here that the federal prosecutor knew from the beginning who leaked Valary Plames name and CIA employment..knew it was not Scooter Libby.

It should also be noted that Armitage told Colin Powell he was the source of the so called leak..very early on and neither bothered to ever tell Bush administration officials or Bush but rather left them out flapping in the breeze while a firestorm of lies flew in the leftist press, flew out of leftist congressional members mouths and the lying premise simply became a leftist fact repeated endlessly by all leftist twits.

In any event and long after the fact, the Washington Post finally worked up the guts to lay the story out straight and castigate all those others who continued and continue to this day to blame Bush and administration officials who supported and support the war, for exposing Plame as a CIA employee.

posted July 07, 2007 10:31 AM              

This is not a left or right issue. It's an issue of the president of the U.S. breaking the law. Libby has not served any of his time. It is illegal to commute the sentence of anyone who has not even served any of his time in prision. Those that Bill Clinton pardoned and other Presidents in the past as well DID serve time in prison.

posted July 07, 2007 01:07 PM            

Of course, those speaking on that subject are ignorant of the facts.

Under Texas law, the Governor cannot commute or Pardon a convicted murderer..even one scheduled for execution. The only thing the Governor can do is stay an execution until an investigating panel reviews the case and that stay is a one time affair and is effective for only about 45 day??...not sure of how long but it's not long.

So, we still have the save Tammy Fay Baker advocates who apparently don't recall, don't give a damn or have an ax to grind...those who overlook the fact she was a multiple murderer and in a particularly brutal style of slaying.

Clinton pardoned for money, he pardoned for votes, he pardoned friends including his drug dealer connection.

Bush commutes a sentence of someone who committed no basic crime at all and the hypocrisy runs neck deep in America.

posted July 07, 2007 01:25 PM            

If anyone really knows the Clintons, it's Dick Morris

The Clintons' Cronyism Circus
Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Saturday, July 7, 2007

Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton are absolutely outraged that President Bush granted executive clemency to Scooter Libby, recently convicted of making false statements under oath.

They obviously believe that Libby should serve his 30 month sentence.

Does that mean that they now think that perjurers should go to jail? Or have they simply forgotten about Bill Clinton's own plea agreement in the last hours of his presidency — for making false statements under oath?

Some people would call that perjury. (Indeed, perjury, one of the highest leftist values}

One would have thought that Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn't touch the Libby executive clemency issue with a ten-foot pole — for lots of reasons.

After all, Bill Clinton has a well-earned reputation as the king of pardons — granting 140 of them during his last minutes in office — with many going to terrorists, people who had paid Hillary's brothers to arrange for pardons, contributed money or key support to Hillary's Senate campaign, given the Clintons expensive personal gifts, and/or made large contributions to Bill Clinton's presidential Library.

One of the pardons went to Bill's own brother, Roger, while another went to Susan MacDougal, who kept quiet about Clinton during the Whitewater trial.

That's really cronyism, Hillary.

Given the disgraceful Clinton record on pardons, most reasonable people would have kept quiet — especially when Libby's offense was so similar to Bill's own criminal conviction. But the self-righteous former first couple couldn't resist. Once the clemency was announced, Hillary immediately attacked President Bush, saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

Hey, Hillary, do you understand what cronyism really means?

Cronyism is favoritism shown to friends and supporters without regard to their qualifications. And that's what Bill Clinton's pardons were all about. Except, as usual, the Clintons went way over the top. So, in addition to granting pardons to undeserving friends, Bill Clinton also pardoned undeserving strangers who paid his family, friends, campaign coffers, and presidential library.

Now Bill and Hillary claim that his highly controversial pardons were "different" than the Libby clemency.

He's absolutely right . . .

The big difference was that many of the Clinton pardons were patently bought and paid for — something event the Clintons don't claim to be the case in the Libby commutation.

Hillary's brothers were paid more than $500,000 to lobby the president for pardons that were then granted to con artists and drug dealers. For a fee of $400,000, Hugh Rodham successfully pushed for a pardon for drug kingpin Carlos Anabel Vignali, convicted of shipping a half-ton of cocaine from L.A. to Minnesota.

His father was a big contributor to the Democratic Party: He gave more than $150,000 to the Los Angeles Democrats. Obviously, the investment was a shrewd one.

That's cronyism, Hillary. Get it?

Tony Rodham advocated a pardon for Edgar and Vanna Jo Gregory. The Gregorys, who owned a carnival company, defrauded a federal bank. When the pardon was publicized, Hillary stated that Tony was "not paid" by the Gregorys for his work on the pardon. Tony repeated that line on the "Larry King" show.

After an investigation, the House Government Operations Committee disagreed and announced that Hillary's statement was inaccurate. Now, a federal bankruptcy court overseeing the carnival company's bankruptcy is about to rule on whether over $100,000 paid to Tony Rodham at the time of the pardons was a loan or payment for "consulting."

The Gregorys contributed over $100,000 to Hillary's campaign and other Democratic causes. These folks were well known to the Clintons. They visited them at Camp David and were hired to stage two carnivals on the White House grounds — paid for by the taxpayers.

That's cronyism, Hillary.

When the Rodham brothers' exploits were made public, Bill and Hillary announced that they were "shocked and saddened" by the disclosure. At the time of the pardons, the Rodham brothers were actually living in the White House with the Clintons and had made contact with the highest level of presidential assistants. But the Clintons claimed that they were totally unaware of what Hugh and Tony were doing.

But, it wasn't just Hillary's family who benefited from the Clinton cronyism. Bill's brother Roger was pardoned for his drug conviction, and he was allegedly paid $30,000 to promote six felons, although those pardons were never granted.

That's cronyism, Hillary.

The most outrageous Clinton pardons went to 16 members of the terrorist gang, the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist group responsible for over 130 bombings in the U.S. — attacking the New York office of the FBI, military recruiting headquarters, and even former president Jimmy Carter's Chicago campaign office. Six people died and dozens more were injured as a result of FALN's actions. These terrorists never even asked for a pardon, but because Hillary wanted to ingratiate herself with the Hispanic population in New York during her first Senate race, they were suddenly granted a commutation of their sentences.

Although the commutations were opposed by the FBI and the Clinton Justice Department, Bill Clinton granted them to all 16 terrorists. Once again, Hillary claimed to have "no involvement in or prior knowledge of the decision."

Her statement is ridiculous.

Two days before the announcement of the pardons, New York City councilman, Jose Rivera, personally presented Hillary with a packet of materials including a letter asking her to "speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive clemency to the prisoners." What a coincidence: The sentences were immediately commuted!

Hillary, that's another example of cronyism.

Joe Connor, the son of one of the innocent men killed by the FALN terrorists at the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, put it this way: "The Clinton family traded the release of terrorists for votes, votes that were promised to be delivered by New York politicians to Hillary for Senate and Gore for president. That was clear."

That's cronyism, Hillary.

And Hillary actually has the audacity to accuse President Bush of cronyism!

This woman has no shame.

Then, of course, there was also Marc Rich, the fugitive oil broker who renounced his American citizenship. Rich was illegally buying oil from Iran during the American trade embargo and hid the $200 million in trading (and over $100 million in profits) with Iraq using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations.

Ironically, Scooter Libby was one of Rich's lawyers, while Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney who brought the indictment. Amazingly, the U.S. Attorney's Office was never contacted by the White House for input into the pardon decision.

Here's what the prosecuting attorney had to say about the pardon: "I cannot imagine two people that were less suited for a presidential pardon than Marc Rich and Pincus Green [the co-defendant]. It is inconceivable that President Clinton chose to pardon the two biggest tax cheats in the history of the United States who had renounced their citizenship, been fugitives for 17 years, and who had traded with the Iranians during the hostage crisis. While I do not know what motivated President Clinton to pardon Rich and Green, I can state that it is implausible that those pardons were based on his evaluation of the merits of the case . . ." (For more, go to www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonsex8.htm.)

Interestingly, Rich's wife bought furniture for the Clinton's Chappaqua home and contributed at least $450,000 to the Clinton Library.

That's cronyism, Hillary.

Finally, there were the four New Square pardons. There, the Hasidic defendants were convicted of pocketing $40 million of federal scholarship money. Hillary visited the community, and on Election Day the community supported Hillary 1,400 to 12. Weeks later, on December 22, 2000, President Clinton met with the New Square leaders to discuss a pardon. Hillary attended the meeting, but claims that she did not speak.

Apparently, she didn't have to — the pardons were granted.