The Libby Letters: Did Michael Horowitz Threaten Judge Walton? (Emptywheel)

[kpete]

The Libby Letters: Did Michael Horowitz Threaten Judge Walton?
by emptywheel
Mon Jun 11, 2007 at 06:18:48 AM PDT

I wanted to call attention to the Michael Horowitz letter in support of leniency for Libby. Horowitz issues a thinly-veiled threat to retaliate if Libby has to do jail time.

Disposition of the Libby case will have much to do with whether the country will further and gravely descend into "us v. them" feelings of bitterness and contention. As the Bork case led inexorably to the Clinton impeachment, so can the case before the Court profoundly criminalize and poison the country's political process with calls for retribution on the part of many who will never believe--never--that Scooter merits criminal punishment or, God forbid, incarceration. It is an irony that Scooter would be the last to support such an embittering development, but the esteem in which he is held is such that any but the most Solomon-like disposition of his case could easily ensure this occurrence.T

...................

...........Horowitz' predictions of "calls for retribution" are no mere prediction, but a threat, precisely because he has carried out such "retribution" in the past.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0003.landay.html
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/08/cov_13news.html

What I don't understand, though, is the target of his threat. Is Horowitz threatening to impeach the second President Clinton (or President Obama) because a staunchly independent prosecutor, appointed by a loyal Republican, prosecuted Libby for covering up Dick Cheney's role in the outing of a CIA NOC? Is he threatening to attack Democrats because a hard-nosed Republican appointee followed court guidelines and treated Libby with the same sternness he treats African-American drug dealers?

Or is Horowitz threatening to retaliate against Judge Walton himself, who was appointed by George W Bush and recently named by Chief Justice Roberts to the FISA Court? These right wingers aren't above threatening judges, after all, though it's not usually the Republican appointees they target.

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/Horowitz.pdf

[mod mom]

1. Who is responsible for the ""us v. them" feelings of bitterness and contention"?

Perhaps those who turned our DOJ into an extension of the Republican Party, that's who.

Why, Mr Horowitz, do you believe that Scooter is above the law?

[Gabi Hayes]

2. har de HAR!! do you think it's THIS Michael Horowitz?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Horowitz

[Gabi Hayes]

3. or this Michael Horowitz?

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Horowitz, a charter member of the neo-cons ensconced at the Hudson Institute directing its Project for International Religious Liberty, has toiled tirelessly since 1995 to create a significant, active evangelical Christian base for conservative foreign policy priorities by exchanging the ideological rhetoric of national security and freedom for moral rhetoric of religious persecution and human rights.

He is the godfather of the right wing’s attempts to harness the political energies of traditionally isolationist Christian conservatives to promote the GOP’s foreign policy agenda in the same way that domestic hot button issues like abortion, gay marriage, and “Intelligent Design” are exploited to drive evangelicals to the polls.

Horowitz has used the theme of persecution of Christians in regimes like the Sudan, North Korea, and China to create a set of evangelical foreign policy priorities that Karl Rove and the Bush White House, with their conviction that the evangelical political force is crucial to their electoral success, are anxious to heed, acknowledge, and encourage.

Evangelical Christians have responded and Horowitz was recognized as one of the world’s ten most influential Christians by a Southern Baptist magazine. Even though he’s Jewish and, according to one piece I read, an ex-communist.

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2005/06/jay-lefkowitz-michael-horowitz-and.html

[annabanana]

4. SOME say they are "one and the same"

(what..who .. me?. . . LOOK OVER THERE)