Scooter's lawyers tried to invoke the "bloggers are mean" defense

[JohnyCanuck]

re. releasing to the public the support letters for Scooter.

Libby’s Supporters Who Wrote to Judge Learn That Letters Take on New Life on the Web
By NOAM COHEN

In what may be a sign of things to come, the lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr. last month invoked the rarely used courtroom tactic: the “bloggers can be mean” defense.

The issue was whether to release the more than 150 letters written to Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, nearly all in support of Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Libby was convicted in March of lying in investigations into the leak of the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame Wilson. Last week, Judge Walton sentenced Mr. Libby to 30 months in prison.

As the judge considered the appropriate punishment, he received testimonials to Mr. Libby’s character from luminaries like former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was pressured to resign the Word Bank presidency amid charges that he engaged in favoritism in the employment of his girlfriend.

When representatives of the news media asked that the letters be released, Mr. Libby’s lawyers argued against that, saying it “needlessly risks undermining the fair administration of justice.”

Then, alluding to the sometimes combative world of online media, they added there was “the real possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the Internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers.”

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt997.html

[rpannier]

1. Wow! Cheney, Wolfowitz and Bolton

That should get the book thrown at him...unless they wrote in opposition to him.

Maybe scrubbie and delay can kick in his support for extra measure...that should get scooter a hangin' tree.