Bloody Lambs

My political sparring partner, Matt, of Driving Too Fast, has inspired me to comment on Bush's commute of Scooter's prison sentence.

If you are going to spare the lamb, spare the damn lamb. Bush comes off like he is trying to appease his critics with a half-assed half-measure. I would rather see him go whole hog, or whole lamb as the case may be.

Matt says, in part..

"You don’t sacrifice the lamb. You just stab it a little.

Who is appeased in that equation? Not the deity waiting for the sacrifice. Not the lamb’s owner. For sure not the damn lamb."

I have read pages and pages of comments condemning Bush. As a people we seem to have so much righteous energy! One of the more popular rants is that Libby is the only person ever to have been pardoned for obstruction of justice.

Before this particular tidbit is accepted as truth by virtue of continuous echo, lets review some recent history.

• G.W. Bush Pardons (117)
• Clinton's Pardons (456)
• Bush Sr. Pardons ( 77)
• Reagan's Pardons (406)
• Carter's Pardons (566)
• Ford's Pardons (409)
• Nixon's Pardons (926)

I didn't bother to count how many of these pardons or commutations were for obstruction. I saw several from Clinton's list alone and only scanned the others. Look at the numbers. Can any reasonable person believe that Scooter Libby is more deserving of hard time than the hundreds upon hundreds of other pardons we never hear a peep about?

The news cycle will play this up until some new bloody thing comes along to beat on. They are selling conflict. When are we going to stop buying it wholesale and using our own brains to decide what we are enraged about? Darfur anyone? Now there is a conflict I could get righteously enraged over.

Should we be spending the next couple of months debating the justness of Scooter's already sealed fate, or should we be demanding answers for why things like this are still happening? For the record, the only candidate I have seen showing appropriate passion for resolving the genocide in Darfur is Joe Biden.

I want more from this country. I want more from our press and our leaders. I want to demand outrage and action. I don't want to accept that we can't do more than squabble over our differences. While we are sitting in our air-conditioned living rooms, kicked back in our over-stuffed La-Z Boys, debating pizza or Chinese take-out, while we whine about Scooter not doing hard time; people are being raped, tortured, murdered and starved to death because we can't pay attention long enough to help.