Byron York On Libby - What's The Rush?

Byron York wonders why Judge Walton can't let Libby stalk the streets pending his appeals.

Frequent commenter (and attorney) Cathyf had an interesting guess - her gist is that Judge Walton, in the highest profile case of his career, would prefer not to be reversed on appeal.  So, Walton delivers a sentence at the high end, hustles Libby off to the hoosegow, and hopes Bush pardons him, rendering all appeals moot.

OK, that makes sense. 

But Other Tom, another frequent commenter and attorney disputes the notion that the trial judges have such outsized and tender egos:

I very seriously doubt that Walton is concerend at all about what the D.C. Circuit might do, and I also doubt that the D.C. Circuit judges will atttempt to read any signals, or be influenced by any signals they do detect, concerning whether Bush is likely to pardon Libby or not. Every federal judge I have ever known becomes entirely indifferent, very early on, to possible reversals by the appeals courts. Ditto the appeals judges (perhaps because I practiced in the Ninth Circuit).

OK, that makes sense too.

Well - this trial was not most trials.  Given its high profile, I'll back the idea that Walton would prefer to avoid being reversed. 

Comments

[alcibiades]

Well, except for there was one instance where Judge Walton made some comment to the effect that if he got reversed on some decision or other - forget which one offhand - it would be time for him to consider hanging up his robes. So I don't think that he falls into the more generalized category that OT is describing.

[qquirl]

Tyoe Pad really is shit. It wants a credit card to leave a comment too? Don't pay for internet services, they shit on you anyway.
Comments:

Comey and Fitzgerlad's appointment doesn't make any difference to the response from Plame when a criminal conspiracy investigator was appointed, she sued. The thinking was that she was going to be prosecuted.

Foley was a USAID employee in Jordan who was assassinated. Plame's boss was named Foley. Foley was PC and so was Joe.

Fitz prosecution: Immaterial to the Prosecution, no crime occurred. This is what Plame and CIA rely on when in court. NY and the pipeline worked for Plame and so did Fitzgerald. What is the connection? Fitzgerald, covert id laws, IC employees and agents of those agencies and the US government, Harvard, Chayes, PC NGOs and USAID(CIA) money.

Fitz was biased to the five year law, DIA covert rules, etc. because he actively works with people like Plame. He knows who they are. He knows what they do. He goes to Harvard.

Anyway, it looks like he was the leak to the assassination of the Mercy corps employee. Plame and Chayes. Jordan could have been the same leak. Fitz knew he was doing this and Plame did the same thing while he was investigating. Okay with them. The five year law really had little to do with the prosecution(of Plame as a bad CIA agent), but everyone knew this and Plame, Fitz, and Chayes probably think they have forgiveness, but I think they know better.

The questions could be asked of Plame:

least puzzling is "why did she lie?" is "Why such silly lies?"

The real crimes have been approved by the DoJ and passed. Clear. So, JFK and the pipeline and more smart work from the terrorists next time Plame makes the request. The next time, they will have figured a way around the special teams. They won't be killed off or put in jail.

The CIA's and other agencies remedy has always been repeating. Using other people's lives. It works for Lucifer, so why not Plame and the DoJ?

[qquirl]

Anyway, over time, I met this x PC guy who operates alot like a terrorist. He uses the discus program to log all the IP shit from his blog(it will even call your number) and sells the list to the Mossad. Later, he gets money from the State Department(employees) after some lives.

Type Pad really is pissing me off.

Tom, bad way to grow a business.

[cathyf]

Frequent commenter (and attorney) Cathyf

No, no, not a lawyer. I'm a computer programmer and mathmetician by vocation, a cook and architect by avocation. (I'm kind of flattered by being thought of as lawyerly, though, which I suppose is a bit counter-cultural in this day and age. ;-)

[boris]

The precision of your logic is a giveaway that your experience with it, like Cecil’s, is more than a tool for persuasion. Nothing against lawyer logic, it’s just that they don’t exhibit traits that develop from having to debug logic that looks perfect on paper but doesn’t work in practice.

[cathyf]

Every federal judge I have ever known becomes entirely indifferent, very early on, to possible reversals by the appeals courts.

Well, there's reversal and then there's reversal. It's one thing to make what everybody agrees is a close call that gets reversed on appeal. It's quite another to have, say for example, all nine supremes each write their own majority opinion reversing you because they each want their own individual opportunity to heap snarky abuse upon your utterly moronic head. I've read enough excerpts from snarky opinions to know that there are a lot of higher court judges who are very well-armed in a battle of wits. I've seen enough of Walton to know that he is vastly outgunned. It's a pretty high-profile case -- Scalia snark could well end up repeated on Jay Leno.

(ps -- I really do know how to spell "mathematician" honest!)

[clarice]

Thanks cathy for not telling the truth--that you dictated that to me and I typed it for you.

[Tom Maguire]

Apparently Bork, Dershowitz and others filed an amicus brief supporting Libby's contention that Fitzgerald's appointment lacked proper supervision and raises Constitutional issues.

Sun

AP

And in his story about the Libby filing Matt Apuzzo at least mentioned Andrea M in the last sentence:

Defense attorneys argued in their filing Thursday that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald lacked the constitutional authority to bring charges against Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. They also said they were unfairly prohibited from questioning NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell about why she said lots of journalists knew Plame's identity. AP

[clarice]

Yes--I've been discussing that on the Mitchell thread. Though this is the first I've heard that they added the Mitchell issue in their filing.

[Uncle Pinky]

That Sun article needs to go to rewrite, unless Libby actually was the SP.

[cathyf]

...you dictated that to me and I typed it for you.

Well, clarice understand that I love ya' dearly, but if we were divvying up responsibilities for a project, when it came to assigning you a task, "typist" would not be my first choice for you. ::grin::

[BarbaraS]

This case has smelled to high heaven from day one. I am no longer surprised by the one sided justice system of this case. The whole trial was based on railroading Libby and defense was denied witnesses who could have cleared up the matter. I was astonished that Walton got so angry when Libby declined to testify. It was as if a plan had been thwarted. That was an indication (one of many) that things were not on the up and up. He was willing to deny a defendant the basic right not to testify and blatantly punished him for not doing so.

It seems to me that there is a rush to judgement and punishment on somebody's part. It seems like someone else is being pushed into a corner. If Bush fails to pardon Libby the right will be up in arms and will desert him and if he pardons Libby the left will be up in arms and will trash him in the media and obstruct him even more in congress. I still think that this is the object or maybe that Libby will finally deliver Cheney into the libs' hands. The sentencing and possible immediate jail time is the last ditch effort toward the latter. But the former is still a distinct possibility. I am sure that Bush is aware of this possible manipulation and is trying to avoid it.

Politics is getting uglier and uglier. It is all based on the democrats' not being in power for so long and still powerless even though they a the majority in congress. They seem to think they can regain this power if only they can pull Bush's teeth. The democrats will stop at nothing to regain this power and won't quibble about sending an innocent man to jail to accomplish their goals.

[Other Tom]

I'll defer to Cathyf. The Ninth Circuit operates in its own separate universe.

[cathyf]

Hmmm... OT, are you insinuating that the Ninth Circuit doesn't mind being called idiots because they ARE idiots? (It certainly matches what I've heard about them...)

[clarice]

cathyf..typist (or waitress) are the last two jobs any sensible person would assign to me.

[trouthall]

I've no idea whether Judge Walton is as designing as Cathyf suggests, but Other Tom's claim that trial judges "call 'em as they see 'em," indifferent to the possibility of reversal, is wildly at odds with my experience, which finds state and federal judges often acutely sensitive to appellate rebuke. They tend to react like a scorned teen-ager, taking their mortification out, not on the lawyer who secured the reversal, but on the one who'd secured the trial court ruling subsequently overturned. "You led me down the primrose path" was how one federal district judge put it to me after the court of appeals overturned his order granting my motion for summary judgment.

[XrumerChel]

Money and benefits have to be [url=http://www.incestparty.t35.com]incest[/url] competitive, of course,
but the deciding factor for many employees is morale [url=http://www.www.incestparty.t35.com/incest_video]incest video[/url]
incest video incest

[Mavy]

Hi all. Cool site zawermash Google
Thank.