bold is poster's:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Judge_throws...wsuit_0719.html

I certainly don't know enough law to comment on the merits of this dismissal.

But it looks like the loss of a minor battle.

This was a Bush crony Judge. Bates was a Ken Starr protegee who agreed that the President could be sued when the suits were filed against Clinton. Unfortunately Bush has worked assiduously to stack the Federal Courts with Federalist Society hacks, who are totally corrupt and cover that up with expensive suits, leather briefcases, Rolexes, and a corporate mind-set that puts their narrow interests above the rights of the vast majority of American's. And hide behind a phony "strict-constructionist" interpretation of the very Constitution and Bill of Rights they scorn, when it interferes with their pursuit of personal wealth. And even includes enabling treason with no accountablity.

This is just one more example of the damage done by the Bush Administration and a consequence of voting for, or in any way enabling Republicans to have power. It stretches to and affects every aspect of life from your rights to redress, your job, carreer, patriotism, America's security, your very life and the lives of your loved ones, to the air you breathe, and the very food you eat.

Judge Reggie Walton was also a bushie Crony who was nominated by Poppy41.

Each piece of the puzzle is a step toward no one getting any punishment.

Libby has friends in high places, all who donated mucho money to pay for his relief, and there was never any doubt of jail time. Even this pseudo probation, everyone knows that Libby could do anything and he won't get jail time, and nothing will happen, and no one shall suffer if their name is in the Bushfamilyinc.

So Bates=Walton. Too bad they didn't do more during Iran-Contra and think about consequences back then.

Dear Congress
by emptywheel

John Bates has issued a ruling I've been anticipating--dismissing the Wilson lawsuit against Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Armitage. If I'm reading correctly, Bates ruled that he has no jurisdiction to rule in this matter.

He therefore did not deal with many of the arguments the Wilsons and the defendants raised in this case--including Cheney's claim to absolute immunity. But he prefaces his detailed discussion with the following comment.



All of which is a 40-page way of saying what Cheney and Libby and Rove and Armitage did was wrong. But a civil suit is not the appropriate venue to address that wrong. And with Bush's self-serving commutation of Libby's sentence, the criminal courts have been foreclosed as the means to address that wrong, too.

Which leaves Congress. There is abundant evidence already in the public record showing top members of the Administration--including Bush himself--abused their positions of power to rebut Joe Wilson. Some of those actions--including the commutation itself, since it removed Bush from criminal liability for his actions--fit well within the purview of Congress.

It's time to step up, Congress. That crappy hearing last week did much to polarize the two parties. But did little to address the evidence before us, pertaining directly to Bush's potential move to declassify a CIA spy's identity for political retaliation. Two judges who have reviewed the facts agree the actions were wrong. What is Congress going to do about it?

What's your point? Walton has written that the commutation was absolutely wrong.

Reggie's Going to Smile
by emptywheel

If the hapless Democratic Congress ever gets around to an investigation through which they can ask Reggie to turn over the CIA Leak case grand jury materials.

But for now, I'd say he's still cranky, wouldn't you?



In the meantime, I'm not holding my breath on the hapless Congress.

Update: And then later, when Reggie contemplates whether the President's wacky ideas about sentencing "offend the Constitution," he says:

Not a happy camper. In fact, Reggie (probably unconstitutionally) decides to answer a question many have been asking:

Plame Suit Dismissed by Controversial GOP Loyalist
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 19 July 2007

A federal judge has dismissed the civil lawsuit filed against top Bush administration officials by former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The judge, John Bates of the US District Court in Washington, DC is a Bush appointee who previously dismissed a lawsuit filed by the federal government against Vice President Dick Cheney. That suit sought access to Cheney's energy task force documents.

Since his tenure on the federal bench began six years ago, Bates's legal opinions and rulings supporting the administration's executive powers stand in stark contrast to his legal work as an assistant US attorney. He worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr prosecuting President Clinton's Whitewater investment deals.

In 1997, Bates successfully argued for the release of thousands of pages of White House documents related to Hillary Clinton's conversations about Whitewater.

In January 2003, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that the judge was a hypocrite by pursuing access to White House documents when Clinton was in office while supporting Cheney's claims of executive privilege in refusing to turn over his energy task force documents to Congress.

"When that guy was working for Ken Starr, he wanted to go open the dresser drawers of the White House," Leahy said. "I guess it's a lot different when it's a Republican vice president."

Since 2001, Judge Bates has been a staunch supporter of the White House's assertion of executive privilege on a wide range of controversial legal challenges by third parties.

Bates, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001, first came to the public's attention in December 2002 when he dismissed a lawsuit filed against Cheney by the Government Accountability Office that sought access to the vice president's energy task force documents.

In that case, Bates threw out the GAO's lawsuit, stating that the GAO lacked the authority to sue the vice president, a ruling that was criticized by the legal community. On Thursday, Bates dismissed the Wilsons' lawsuit for similar reasons.

He wrote that, as a technical legal matter, the Wilsons can't sue under the Constitution. Bates added that the defendants had the right to rebut criticism aimed at the White House by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who accused the administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence. He said the leak of Plame's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters was "unsavory" but simply a casualty of Wilson's criticism of the administration.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence by speaking with members of the press, is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

Wilson and his wife have filed a civil suit against top administration officials - among them Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Political Adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for allegedly violating his and Plame Wilson's civil rights when they disclosed her covert CIA status to the media. The defendants argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed on grounds that it was a "policy dispute." Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison earlier this year of four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury about how he discovered that Plame Wilson was a CIA employee, and whether he discussed her role at the agency with the media. Bush commuted Libby's sentence calling it "excessive," despite the fact that it had been in line with federal sentencing guidelines.

A federal investigation led by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White Officials had retaliated against and sought to discredit Joseph Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had manipulated Iraq intelligence by telling a handful of elite Washington, DC reporters that Wilson's investigation into the Niger claims could not be trusted. The administration told the reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger. The officials suggested that the trip was the result of nepotism. Plame Wilson testified before Congress this year that she had had no role in selecting her husband for the mission.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who leads Wilson's defense team, said she would immediately appeal Judge Bates's verdict.

"We disagree with the court's holding and intend to pursue this case vigorously to protect all Americans from the vindictive government officials who abuse their power for their own political ends," Sloan said in a statement. She added that Bates "recognized that the Wilson's claims 'pose important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials.'"

Wilson, the former ambassador, reacted to Bates's ruling by vowing to continue fighting.

"This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me." Wilson said. "We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation. Today's decision is just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are committed to seeing this case through."

Bates's support of the Bush administration's position on secrecy was instrumental in getting the judge appointed to the court set up by Congress in 1978 to monitor domestic spying immediately after the Bush administration said it would start using the court to obtain domestic surveillance warrants. Bates, who was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Chief Justice John Roberts in February, replaced a judge who resigned in protest following news reports that the White House circumvented the court and spied on American citizens who were allegedly communicating with terrorists. As a judge on the FISA court, Bates reviews the Justice Department's applications for domestic spying activities in the US and has a final say on whether to approve the requests.

One of the attorneys for the Wilsons was on HardBall today and says there will be an appeal......

lenal

the point is it was all a sham show. Big deal Walton wrote what he did, in the end, he won't do anything more, nor will Libby get jail time for any of this, and neither will anyone, and Novak promotes a book and gets to play out his life as a martyr and the Pro-constitutionalists
get it up the rear.
Walton's deeds in the end meant nothing, and for all we know, he knew going in he could have given 1 year, 1 month, one day, 100 years, it is all the same=nothing.

And they spin it and spin it and spin it.

Just like the judge in Iran-Contra said crimes were committed, but no one did any time(one got killed off) and Marc Rich was the last one pardoned.

It was right as an initial ruling, we just haveto see where it goes from here.

This is scary. Talk about another fox in the henhouse! Oops, on second thought a better type of canine in this case is "poodle", or "lapdog".

Walton won't do anything more because, at this juncture, he can't. Not because there is a massive conspiracy to allow Scooter to go free, but because it is beyond his jurisdiction to do more. Unless Scooter breaks the requirements of his monitored release (can't think of the correct terms this morning), there isn't a thing Reggie can do to him now.

However, the HJC and SJC can ask Fitz for information about Bush & Cheney's joint questioning session since they were not under oath. And Fitz can help point Waxman down the shortest path to bigger fish.

Oh, Fitz is a Republican, so I guess that won't happen.