Reggie Steps To The Plate And Stirs The Drink

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In baseball, one of the most charismatic players ever was Reggie Jackson; he was a great talent, bold and his own man. Always. Jackson was known as "Mr. October" for his ability to always come through in the clutch during playoffs and the World Series. Reggie was also a bit of a self promoter, and once referred to his place on the Yankee team by saying "I’m the straw that stirs the drink".

Well, here at this blog, we have our own favorite Reggie, Judge Reggie Walton of the DC District Court who presided over the Libby trial. While Reggie Walton is by no means a self promoter, quite the polar opposite actually, he is an immensely talented judge, is bold and is his own man. And, yesterday, he stirred things up a bit. In Milwaukee to give a speech on the importance of literacy and education, reporter John Diedrich of the Journal-Sentinel caught up with Walton for a few questions.

"The president has that authority and exercised it, and that has to be respected,"
….
"The downside is there are a lot of people in America who think that justice is determined to a large degree by who you are and that what you have plays a large role in what kind of justice you receive. . . . It is crucial that the American public respect the rule of law, or people won’t follow it."
….
Walton, who said he and his family were threatened after he handed down the sentence, said the time he gave Libby was at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines.

"I believe firmly you apply the law and apply it strictly," Walton said from his chambers in Washington. "I don’t give white-collar criminals a pass."

In so many words, Judge Walton is saying that President Bush directly undermined the rule of law in this country when he erased all responsibility and accountability for Libby from his criminal conduct. Judge Walton is absolutely right. And the worst part is, that by doing so, Bush was shamelessly covering up his, and Vice-President Cheney’s, own crimes. It is important that people not be allowed to forget this concept in the whirlwind of all the other Bush/Cheney blights on our society. Judge Walton has my thanks for making these statements, give him yours.

49 replies
  2. Citizen92 says:

    Judge Walton has also been involved in the White House visitors records release/non-release fiasco.

    For some time, CREW and others have been trying to learn the identity of White House visitors connected to Cheney’s Energy Task Force, Jack Abramoff and religious conservatives. Walton was happily on hand to move that ball forward in CREW’s favor, ever so slightly.

    http://citizensforethics.org/node/31339

    On March 28, 2008, District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued an order in CREW v. NARA, a lawsuit brought under the Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) for documents related to the National Archives and Records Administration’s role in the government’s decision that White House visitor records created by the Secret Service are not agency records subject to the FOIA.

    Judge Walton ordered the Archives to submit the vast majority of withheld documents to the Court for an in camera (or private) review and for a handful of documents ordered the Archives to submit a more detailed explanation in support of its withholdings.

    The Court concluded that only 10 of the documents were properly withheld. The parties are not required to comply with the order until 30 days after the Court has issued its memorandum opinion explaining the underlying basis for its order.

  3. newspaperbrat says:

    Great post and many thanks. Reggie Jackson lives in my community so I especially appreciated your analogy and imagine he would also agree completely. ;~) Join me and digg this post.

    • bmaz says:

      Heh, I’ve met Reggie a couple of different times around here. Still comes around ASU baseball every now and then, and is always at the Barrett- Jackson car auctions in January. Pretty decent chap.

  4. Anna says:

    Judge Walton seems so honest and committed to our constitution. Walton did not give Libby a pass but Bush did. Bush’s commutation confirmed once again that there are several justice systems in this country.

    Ot Bmaz was having a hard time finding any updates on the Apac/Rosen espionage trial after Judge Ellis announced that the trial was indefinately postponed (had not been sure what that meant) and (since we know the MSM and so many others will not touch this investigation and trial). So I called the District Court in Alexandria Virginia several days ago and left a message on one of their lines and got a message back. The fellow (will not mention his name) reported that there were private hearings taking place right now going over classified documents and intelligence having to do with the trial. That the trial date will still be announced and that it would be open to the public. Does anyone know any blogs that are keeping up with this investigation and trial?

  5. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    OT – Apologize for the OT, bmaz, but did anyone see this yet? Just on my RSS feed (source = Reuters) and follows up on a currency theme that EW has raised repeatedly:

    http://www.gulfinthemedia.com/…..8;lang=en&

    TEHRAN, April 30 (Reuters) – Iran, the world’s
    fourth-largest oil producer, is conducting all its crude
    trading in euro and yen, instead of the U.S. dollar, an Iranian
    official was quoted as saying on Wednesday….
    In the past, Iranian officials have said that oil remained
    priced in the U.S. dollar but with actual payments carried out
    in other currencies.
    Iran said it earned $70 billion from oil exports in the
    year to March, windfall revenues on the back of soaring crude
    prices.
    International crude prices recently hit almost $120 a
    barrel, while Iran media said Iranian crude had risen above
    $102 a barrel.

    Then mix in with UPI Ben Lando’s latest at http://iraqoilreport.com/:

    Iraq oil sales earned $500 million more in March than February because of increased oil prices, despite a slight drop in exports, Oil Ministry data shows.
    The average price Iraq oil fetched last month was $95.02 per barrel, up from $89.79 per barrel in February, both below average global prices, which were more than $100 per barrel. Iraq earned $5.6 billion from oil sales in March, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.

    DIdn’t FrankProbst mention** that Gates was blowing smoke, claiming that an ‘extra’ aircraft carrier in the Med was ‘not a threat’ to Iran? And isn’t the Pres of Iran in India for diplomatic talks right now…?

    I’m starting to really not like the idea of EW being out of the US.
    Either that, or I need to start drinking a lot more Beamish myself…

    Apologize for the OT, but this seems ominous.

    ————————–
    ** back on the Lurita Doan thread

  6. bmaz says:

    Hey folks, I have to step out for a bit. I was unable to watch or listen to any of the secrecy/Aftergood hearing this morning; if there was anything totally groovy (jeebus I pull some sick terms out of my butt, don’t I), please leave me a comment and/or link etc. I am kind of interested in what went down. Thanks.

      • skdadl says:

        For anyone who is interested, the hearing is on C-SPAN3 right now — the witnesses have just finished their opening statements, so questions are just starting.

        • PetePierce says:

          Thank you for the headsup. There has never been a more phony, duplicitous, damaging series of people running OLC than in this administration.

          I’m glad to see Whithouse attempting to tear a new one.

  7. FrankProbst says:

    I continue to believe that the Libby pardon was clear-cut obstruction of justice and should have led to an immediate impeachment proceeding. Libby wasn’t just Cheney’s Cheney. He was also officially an Assistant to the President. He was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a case that involved the President. This was a no-brainer, and the Dems blew it.

    • PetePierce says:

      It’s very unfortunate, but if you have a President who believes he and his admin. are beyond good and evil, there is nothing whatsoever short of a successful impeachment to stop them from running scores of criminal enterprises in daylight and then fox hencoop using the pardon power to insulate them or blow off a prosecution.

      In order for that to happen, you need a real Congress with real cojones, and that you don’t have.

  8. JThomason says:

    It’s really a question of accountability and equal protections isn’t? The relationship of the judiciary and the executive is a difficult one, especially in the state courts where the judiciary is frequently elected. That the executive is subject to the rule of law is explicit in the scheme of check’s and balances in the Constitution. The bill of rights was intended to reign in further the arbitrary authority of the executive and this was extended to the states in 13th and 14th Amendments. The fiction of “good faith” in defending the executive is often a fig leaf.

    Now we have an executive who seeks to extend his powers for the purposes of obstructing justice. As you often point out bmaz, without the Congressional will to pursue high crimes and misdemeanors the executive is left unchecked and exempt from the contemplated Constitutional prescriptions. The unwillingness of Congress to act is a reflection of the triumph of the monied interest in the Republic, the military industrial complex, the bifurcated one-party system and those who would exploit citizens for the establishment of an uberclass. This is really historically quite typical in the cycles between the power that attaches to the wealth of the elite as opposed to that which attaches to the wealth of the public.

    The drone of the established media channels is all so much obfuscation–the lynching of Rev. Wright, the drum beat of Iranian wars, the emergence of bawdy infotainment. That the drum beat for accountability is not louder speaks to how easily the public is distracted but privation in the end usually has a way of correcting the responses to such diversions. Of course the risk of viewing the problem sociologically is well established but this approach has its benefits descriptively. In the end the test is whether the policies of an order have the ability to extend the same benefits and protections regularly among a citizenry. As Walton states:

    there are a lot of people in America who think that justice is determined to a large degree by who you are and that what you have plays a large role in what kind of justice you receive. . . . It is crucial that the American public respect the rule of law, or people won’t follow it.

    The instinct to tyranny is no new thing. That privilege is held in the people and not in a few is the blessing of the rule of law. How is it then that that the grotesque visage of Bush’s militarism and economics is met with such political paralysis. It is a great mar on the face of the potential for public Constitutional nobility.

    Indeed, kiss the skull of Geronimo and rule by disingenuous extra-judicial opinions. It’s a dandy bloody suit.

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    I wish Judge Walton could be made responsible for a lawyers’ boot camp, the kind used to rehabilitate troubled teens and troubled minds. Brian A. Benczkowski’s for example.

    Brian’s one of the deputy assistant attorneys general who defended the OLC’s torture regime. Brian Tamanaha at Jack Balkin’s blog explores the deceptive analysis Benckowski uses to reformulate what it takes to violate the Geneva Convention’s Common Article 3. His analysis (coincidentally?) excuses the Bush administration’s criminal mistreatment of its prisoners.

    http://balkin.blogspot.com/200…..-upon.html

    In evaluating what behavior amounts to inhuman or degrading treatment, Common Article 3 has been interpreted to require a court to evaluate “all the facts and circumstances” about the mistreatment of the prisoner. That means the treatment meted out to the prisoner, as perceived by him or her and as perceived by an objective imaginary third person.

    That formulation doesn’t help Bush get out of hot water because it focuses on what happens to the prisoner. Benckowski solves that problem by introducing a new variable not in the law: the motivation of the interrogator.

    He adds “how badly does the interrogator want to know what he or she thinks the prisoner knows” to the list of “all the facts and circumstances”. That effectively turns the law on its head by putting the focus on the government’s claimed purpose for the interrogation and taking it away from what the government does to its prisoner.

    All governments claim to be acting in the best interests of their governed. As the representatives of a group, they claim that their interests inherently outweigh those of any individual. (A parody of the dilemma imposed on Star Trek characters: weighing “the needs of the few against the needs of the many”.) By means of this sleight-of-hand, Benckowski excuses almost any interrogation, no matter how brutal.

    I can’t wait to see what Benckowski and his cohort have done with the Fifth, Sixth and Fourth amendments. If Judge Walton doesn’t get to run a rehabilitation boot camp for these guys, the Russian and American mobs will certainly make them hiring offers they can’t refuse.

  10. readerOfTeaLeaves says:

    Jeez, EW leaves and there are TWO — count ‘em **two** big resignations in the first 24 hours:

    (1) Lurita Doan last night by email, and
    (2) AP now reporting that Alice Fisher will leave DoJ. Via TPM: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/n…..inal_c.php

    Musical chairs? Or what?

      • Petrocelli says:

        I thought the same thing … indictments on the near horizon.

        Of course, I’m not holding my breath, this Congress has been quite adept at doing nothing about criminal charges …

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Well… I just left another link back on the Lurita Doan thread; more info back there.

        But please explain in more detail what makes you believe this really is the windsocket signal that any of these thieves and thugs will ever be called to account?

    • JThomason says:

      Is the Bush administration using an astrologer to time resignations? Remember Joan Quigley? The retracement I allude to below was exact for Sep. 1 on Apr. 22. In an act of shameless self promotion of absolute astrological folly I posted this in the emptywheel thread entitled “Remember the Torture Tapes?”:

      April 10th, 2008 at 10:01 am

      Saturn is retrograde and retracing the Virgo station it held when Abu Gonzo resigned late last Summer. Could the J. Dean strategy of working up the ladder be yet unfolding? Will Condi be the next to fall?

      Clearly I got the players wrong but the timing of these resignations is peculiar in this light.

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Actually, as a result of some biz contacts in regions of Asia, I began to realize encounter people who were checking with astrologers for ‘propitious dates’ in scheduling deadlines and celebrations.

        I shrugged it off as some kind of particle physics/energy fields sorta thing, because it made more sense to me that way. But certainly people as far as recorded history have paid great attention to the skies; indeed, ancient Uruk (on the Tigris River, 3200 BCE) was famous for its temple scribes who recorded the heavenly motions. “Iraq” is a derivation of ‘Uruk’.

        I do recollect your comment, b/c it prompted me to wonder whether you’ve lived in Korea, or China, or Malaysia. No need to reply; simply an observation on my end.

  11. Petrocelli says:

    Bmaz, when I read about Judge Walton earlier, I thought of you … please give him our thanks when next your paths cross

  12. PetePierce says:

    I’d like to hear Judge Walton’s take on the implications of the Rezko trial testimony on Rove trying to remove Fitz. Thanks for calling attention to this.

  13. PetePierce says:

    OT admittedly but I wonder who is ultimately behind the voter supression via robo call movement in North Carolina? I wonder if a candidate is driving Women’s Voices Women Vote who robocalled African Americans in Ohio and North Carolina with a phony date for voter registration. The North Carolina AG has opened an investigation of WVWV. At least their lawyers’ meters have started running.

    North Carolina AG Opens Investigation of Voter Supression in Black Neighborhoods

    Nonprofit Women’s Voices Women Vote (WVWV) Stops Suspicious N.C. Robo Calls

  15. PetePierce says:

    I’m glad to see a candidate who will pump gas just like the rest of us, a real everywoman who has no less than ten gas hog Chevy Suburbans in the caravan to film this promotion.

    I know I never travel with less than 10 SUVs to carry my stuff.

    • bobschacht says:

      I have an idea about what Dick Cheney’s life sentence should be: Pumping gas for motorists on some busy highway. At least 8 hours per day, including morning and evening rush hours and holidays, for the rest of his life. With a clearly legible sign on his shirt saying “My name is Dick Cheney. So?” Might have some interesting conversations.

      Bob in HI

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Assuming that ‘busy highway’ is in Bagdad, that may be a good idea.
        130 degrees Fahrenheit, just like the US troops and contractors he’s so fond of hyping.

        • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

          Should be “Out in 130 degrees Fahrenheit, just like the US troops and contractors…’

      • PetePierce says:

        Sorry I didn’t get back sooner. I was trying to figure out how to stop the Celtics in Boston and how all this drivin’ the bus and throwin under the bus is being done by people who weren’t even allowed at the back of the bus a few years ago.

        H/T Jon Stewart for all this bus stuff, and reminding me that even though it’s not Chanuka, it’s still the Festival of Wrights.

        H/T Glenzilla who reminds us that the media has the luxury of prioritizing the most important issue of the day ad nauseam but of course as Jon Stewart says, it’s what I would call very ad needeam. I knew my Latin would come in handy even if they lied to me about needing it in med school.

        You mean Jim a link to the eight (I was too off) SUVs Clinton used to stage her pumping gas/or paying for any for the first time since she was close to being a teenager?

        I first saw it at KO but I’ve seen it metastasizing all over the place. What I haven’t found yet though is an OJ/Martha Stewart goin’ home/White Bronco aerial shot of the eight SUV Chevy Suburbans–ya see the Secret Service couldn’t fit into the Indiana guy selected to be exploited, and the poor guy didn’t even get a Hi from Clinton who was multitasking on her cell.

        Here you are(eight down in the videos and isn’t that cosmic during the Festival of Wrights that there were eight Suburbans in Clinton’s convoy):

        EightChevy Suburbans Used to Emphasize Gas Prices by the $109 Millionairess Who Is Just A Working Indiana (this week) Woman

        BTW if you live in a large city and you want to see SUVapalooza just walk in (it’s not that hard) to the federal building garage where the DOJ, Marshals, AOC bureaucratic hacks, and da Judges park and look at all the big momma ass SUVs in row after row level after level. The Marshalls use SUVS in a way that would make Horatio Kane blush. So much for energy conservation by your government.

        • PetePierce says:

          I think anyone who campaigns in a Presidential Primary or General is in the Hall of Fame of Brave no doubt about it. Just thinking about doing that for a day makes me tired. You’re always on except for the few hours you fall asleep in your hotel room and rarely get a day away from the campaign. You’re always worried about raiding more money in even a more intense way than a Senator or House member is.

  16. bmaz says:

    I suggest that it must be a road with the appropriate degree of safety; say, for instance, that road between the airport and Baghdad.

  17. PJEvans says:

    With gas prices going up the way they’ve been doing, any highway in the less-populated areas of the US might do very well. Say Chiriaco Summit or Desert Center, CA. (They’re between Indio and Blythe on I-10. They’re about the only places between Indio and Blythe on I-10. Chiriaco is the home of a Patton museum.)

  18. timethief says:

    So with emptywheel absent and a substitute teacher in for the day I have an OT question. What about those 4 or more underwater communication cables that were cut in the middle east in Jan and Feb. I checked google and the last story was Feb 1st. Has anyone heard anything or is there a suggestion where to look.

  21. Neil says:

    I wrote Judge Walton at Emptywheel’s suggestion prior to sentencing in the Libby trial. I made an argument for why Libby’s sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice in the national security case should be on the high end of sentencing guidelines; because obstruction of justice means no justice will be done and the responsible party will not be tried; because Libby is a lawyer and knows what he does; and because it is important that connected senior White House officials are held accountable to the rule of law just as any other law-breaker who may not have friends in high places.

    Walton did not take my advice. His sentence was on the low end of sentencing guidelines. I think Walton tried to send a message to the White House in so doing. Dumb fuck obstinate thumb-in-your-eye Bush did it anyway and for the illegitimate the reason Walton precluded by giving Libby the light sentence.

    I believe that eventually George Bush will reap what he has sown on this earth.

    Speaking of reaping what you have sown, watch No End in Sight.

  23. JGabriel says:

    BMAZ:

    Judge Walton is absolutely right. And the worst part is, that by doing so, Bush was shamelessly covering up his, and Vice-President Cheney’s, own crimes.

    A minor quibble, but that’s not the worst part.

    That Bush pardoned Libby to cover up his own crimes is understandable, to the extent that it provides a motive for Bush to pardon him. If Bush had no crimes to cover up, the pardon would still suck – simply as an abuse of power to protect his own friends and underlings.

    In other words, the worst part isn’t that Bush pardoned Libby to cover up his own crimes; it’s that Bush committed crimes that he wanted covered.

    .

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