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News stories do not always collide with symbolic resonance--and especially not in close proximity to such an esteemed event as America's Day of Independence--but two particular stories, in the last few days, have conspired to demonstrate the twin extremes of the Bush administration's disregard for the law.
On the one hand, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, close advisor to Dick Cheney and convicted perjuror, had his two and a half year sentence--for covering his boss's ass and lying about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame--conveniently dismissed by the President, who called it "excessive." Libby, sensitive news outlets informed us, will still have to pay a fine of $250,000 and suffer two years of probation, but while his story, which emerged on 2 July, was still dominating the media, Independence Day itself was marked by an Associated Press article which focused on those at the other end of Bush's scale of justice: the "enemy combatants" of Guantánamo Bay, who, we learned from the recently installed prison commander Navy Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, may, after 2,000 days of illegal imprisonment without charge and without trial, be allowed to watch a movie once a week.
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