A Tyrant’s Justice

By Scott Horton

The Democratic presidential candidates addressed the NAACP yesterday. And one of them actually had something very important to say. It was Barack Obama:

Obama derided President Bush’s commutation of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison term, noting black men routinely serve time. “We know we have more work to do when Scooter Libby gets no prison time and a 21-year-old honor student, who hadn’t even committed a felony, gets 10 years in prison,” Obama said.

Aides said Obama was referring to Genarlow Wilson, a Georgia man serving a 10-year prison sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. A judge last month ordered Wilson to be freed, but prosecutors are blocking the order.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in the CIA-leak case. He received a 30-month prison sentence, which Bush commuted last week.

The justice of George Bush is the justice of a tyrant. It is no justice at all. His retainers commit crimes with impunity, and his political opponents, the minorities, the underprivileged receive the boot and the lash. He has brought shame and disgrace to our nation and the machinery of justice which was once our pride. Silence in the face of this assault on our institutions is a badge of cowardice.