By Larry Lipman
The Palm Beach Post
from Truthout

Rep. Robert Wexler says President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence “is nothing short of (a) political quid pro quo, and Congress must go on record in strong opposition.”

Wexler has drafted a resolution to censure Bush and plans to introduce it when Congress returns next Tuesday. A censure is a rare public reprimand but does not carry any other penalty.

House leaders could take the resolution directly to the floor, but that’s unlikely. More likely is that the resolution will be sent to the House Judiciary Committee of which Wexler is a member. Since this is a “sense of the House” resolution, it would not require Senate approval.

Wexler said Bush’s “intervention is an unconscionable abuse of authority by George W. Bush, and Congress must step forward and express the disgust that Americans rightfully feel toward this contemptible decision.

“Scooter Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice by a jury and was appropriately sentenced by a judge President Bush himself appointed. This deceitful chain of events began with the administration’s falsifying of intelligence on Iraqi nuclear capabilities. It is clear that the perjury of Mr. Libby in this case effectively protected President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials from further scrutiny regarding the clear political retaliation against former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent.”

The last president who was censured was James Buchanan in 1860, so the odds are pretty long against this one being adopted. Previous censured presidents were Andrew Jackson in 1834 and John Tyler in 1842. The House did not use the word “censure” in those instances, but its meaning was the same.

Here’s the text of Wexler’s censure resolution:

Resolution Relating to the Censure of George W. Bush

Whereas President George W. Bush has failed to comply with his obligations under Executive Order 12958 concerning the protection of classified national security information in that the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency operative was revealed to members of the media, and in June 2003 Bush Administration officials discussed with various reporters the identity of Ms. Wilson as a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative;

Whereas on July 14, 2003, the name of Ms. Wilson and her status as a CIA operative was revealed publicly in a newspaper column by Robert Novak, and on September 16, 2003 the Central Intelligence Agency advised the Department of Justice that Ms. Wilson’s status as a covert operative was classified information and requested a federal investigation;

Whereas knowingly leaking the identity of a covert agent is a criminal violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (P.L. 97-200);

Whereas Arthur Brown, former Asian Division chief of the CIA, stated that, “cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units”;

Whereas Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, effectively stopped the investigation into this potentially grave national security crime by lying to FBI investigators, and Mr. Libby’s perjury shielded the Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush from further inquiry;

Whereas on March 6, 2007, in U.S. District Court a jury found Mr. Libby guilty on four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to FBI investigators regarding an investigation into the actions of the White House regarding leaking the identity of Ms. Wilson in retaliation for her husband’s contention that the Bush administration twisted intelligence facts to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq;

Whereas on June 5, 2007, Mr. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000;

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