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.
White House spokesman Tony Snow cited the Rich pardon in reacting last week to Democrats’ (namely Bill and Sen. Hillary Clinton’s) criticism of President Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence as well as congressional Democrats’ vows to investigate Bush’s decision.
Other South Texas readers, among them Mike Clifton, variously alleged the Express-News is too liberal or Libby got a raw deal and deserved to be exonerated or that the newspaper was always nicer to Clinton an insult frequently hurled at the media by Bush supporters.
I took the bait, telling Clifton I’d see how the newspaper reacted to the Clinton pardons in 2001. And I must say, Mike, the Express-News acquitted itself splendidly. Here’s what I found:
On Jan. 21, 2001, Bush’s inauguration was atop Page 1 and Clinton’s pardons were at the bottom of the same page, with an inside story on the controversial pardons.
On Jan. 26, 2001, the paper editorialized, “Rich pardon hits sour note.”
And on Feb. 13, 2001, in another editorial, “Bill, Hillary Clinton have lost their way,” editors asked: “But when and where will the excesses end … ?
That was uncannily consistent with language used in the editorial last week criticizing Bush’s decision on Libby which noted: ” … Bush has ensured that the one person convicted of a crime won’t ever be held fully accountable a final excess that violates the public trust.”
I believe neither president, nor their partisan rooters in Congress, hold the moral high ground on this issue. While the Express-News has been consistent in its criticism, the politicians are selective in theirs, dancing for whomever pays the piper or the party they favor. That isn’t honest justice.
Finally, who could write a story this weird? Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Rich, whose appeal was handled by, among others, Scooter Libby. Sound crazy? It’s true.
If you’d like to immerse yourself in the pardoning culture, check out these Web sites: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons.htm, http://tinyurl.com/28x2xu and www.usdoj.gov/pardon/recipients.htm or call me Monday.
Setting it Straight: On June 2, I wrote a column to clarify an impression left in a May 23 Ken Rodriguez column that (unsuccessful) City Council candidate Morris Stribling had been sued for failure to pay property taxes on an office site he purchased in 1999 from Charles Singleton.
Someone failed to transfer part of the property to Stribling’s name. Both he and Singleton were cited for failure to pay back taxes and, according to paperwork supplied to me by Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, the law firm that collects delinquent taxes for Bexar County, Singleton made two payments in 2002 for back taxes totaling approximately $2,000.
The point was: Stribling was not a tax scofflaw. When I interviewed Singleton for the column, he said he didn’t remember paying the back taxes, and last week he brought proof that he didn’t, that Stribling did. Singleton was wronged and I regret my part in wronging him.
