Wednesday, January 21, 2009

No late night pardons?

Not really surprising to me. Bush is really big on protocol and formality and always has been. It's important to him that he be seen as honest and trustworthy on personal matters. That's why the Isaac Toussie pardon got retracted--Bush didn't want a mini-Marc Rich pardon scandal of his own. I'm not saying this as a blanket compliment, as Bush has often been far less scrupulous about telling the truth to the American people (for fear of ruining morale, as crazy as it sounds), but he's not the guy who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I guess that's something in his favor.

I was also unsurprised that he commuted the border agents' sentences. Okay, well a little surprised. All things being equal he wouldn't have done it, I believe. Bush seems to truly believe that the GOP should be more moderate on immigration, and doing something granting clemency to two ICE guys who shot an unarmed man and tried to cover it up doesn't really grease the skids for that. But Bush is in full legacy mode, and not clearing those guys would be a sour note to end his presidency, at least for the Lou Dobbs crowd. I personally find it ironic: the self-styled "law and order" party doesn't seem to care all that much about the rule of law when it comes to their friends like Scooter Libby. Then again, they didn't care about it when conducting the War on Terror, despite the fact that we've faced far more formidable foes in the past that could literally have annhilated this country. This is a group that treats Ollie North as a hero and buys his books. But Ollie is one of the tribe. Virtue to movement conservatives begins and ends with being one of them and following conservative ideology. Even more ironic when you consider decades' worth of conservative politicians decrying moral relativism.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.