Some Republicans Should Have Sever Whip-Lash

On June 6th Rudy Giuliani told Fox News

The [Scooter Libby] sentence was grossly excessive. I would see if it fit the criteria for pardon. I would wait for the appeal. I think what the judge did today argues more in favor of a pardon.

He should be wearing a neck brace to handle the whip-lash. Look at this story from the NY Times back when Rudy respected the law:

September 11, 1987
GIULIANI ASSAILS TERM FOR JUDGE AS VERY LENIENT
By ARNOLD H. LUBASCH
The United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, declared yesterday that the one-year prison sentence that a Queens judge received for perjury was ''somewhat shocking.''
''A sentence of one year seemed to me to be very lenient,'' Mr. Giuliani said, when asked to comment on the sentence imposed Wednesday on Justice Francis X. Smith, the former Queens administrative judge.
...
Justice Smith was convicted of committing perjury before a grand jury ..., Mr. Giuliani said later, adding that ''he could have helped root out corruption'' by cooperating with the grand jury.
...
He was sentenced in State Supreme Court in Queens by Acting Justice John S. Thorp Jr.. who could have sentenced him to a maximum of seven years. A Probation Department suggestion called for community service, rather than a prison term.
...
Federal prosecutors usually refrain from commenting on sentences, particularly in state cases. But Mr. Giuliani said the sentence given to Justice Smith had sent the wrong ''signal'' regarding the investigation of corruption in the city. 'An Inappropriate Sentence'
...
''This kind of sentence is a damaging one in the effort to uncover the corruption in the city,'' he added, ''because it is a more lenient sentence than those given to people who have pled guilty and cooperated and assisted in uprooting much of the corruption.''

''I think it has a relationship to the entire investigation of corruption in the city,'' he said. ''These sentences do not exist in a vacuum. They send signals, and the signal sent by this sentence is the wrong one.''

If sentences as lenient as this one had been given to the Watergate burglars, he added, the whole Watergate affair would not have been uncovered.

ARGH!