BEIJING - Former Chinese State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was executed Tuesday for corruption. This action stands in strong contrast to the news from Washington a week ago, when George W. Bush commuted the 30 month prison sentence of former aide Scooter Libby for committing perjury and obstructing justice.
While I'm not seriously in favor of execution for public corruption just yet (though with another 18 months of Bush/Cheney to go I may get there) it draws an interesting contrast.
Particularly galling about the Libby case, beyond simply that a grown man almost deserves to go to jail simply for being known as "Scooter" is the sudden discovery of mercy by the most trigger happy public figures in modern American history.
Governor George W. Bush of Texas signed 152 death warrants in 153 chances, including Terry Washington, a mentally retarded adult with the cognitive ability of a 7 year old child.
Governor Bush explained his hardline attitude on clemency claiming it was not his place to "replace the verdict of a jury unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair."
So serious was Bush in applying such a standard that even in the case of Karla Faye Tucker, despite pleas from the United Nations commissioner on summary and arbitrary executions, the World Council of Churches, Pope John Paul II, and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and even conservative American political figures such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Robertson.
Bush not only declined to show mercy, but later joked about her death in a manner that even conservative lap-dog Tucker Carlson found shocking.
Now suddenly in the case of Scooter Libby the decider has decided otherwise. Not only is 30 months in prison too much for obstruction and justice and perjury, according to his press secretary Tony Snow Mr. Bush decided that 1 day in prison was excessive.
Now we have at last found the great flaw in the American justice system: not enough executions and too much jail time for perjury!
Odd that a man who for so long embraced the Chinese theory of jurisprudence - lock 'em up, hang 'em high, toss away the key - suddenly walks the merciful path of the pope, but who am I to judge?
I am sure that everyone currently in federal prison on charges of obstruction and perjury are anxiously awaiting clemency from the newly liberated and merciful chief executive as well.
Unless of course what they meant was 1 day in jail for perjury was only too much for rich white males Mr. Bush knows personally...