Freyne Land

***Updated Wednesday afternoon with link to Dr. Dean's CNN remarks***

What a week and it's only Tuesday!

As I was heading out the door late this afternoon for Seven Days and the Ol' "Inside Track" final  check-up, this old familiar face popped up on the boob-tube.

{By the way, because of the July 4 holiday, Seven Days won't hit the streets until Thursday, but "Inside Track" will be posted online Wednesday morning per usual.]

And there's that cheapskate, fake-bookshelf shade behind him at "Vermont's Own," WGOP, er, sorry, WCAX-TV in South Burlington, Vermont. It's the nearest satellite up-link to the Dean "ranch," about a mile away.

Howard Dean was in the groove and kicking some serious butt regarding President Bush League's commutation of the sentence of Scooter the Liar, an aide who helped "out" a covert CIA agent. Nice people. Couldn't find a tape or transcript on CNN's website when I got home [see bottom of post for Update]. I wasn't taking notes, but I grabbed this official statement off the DNC website by Chairman Howard Dean of Vermont:

“Once again President Bush and the GOP have undermined a core American value: equal justice under the law for every American. By commuting this sentence, President Bush is sending a clear message that the rules don’t apply to the Bush White House or loyal Republican cronies. After promising that anyone who violated the law would be taken care of, President Bush instead handed Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card. Though Libby was convicted by a jury of lying about a matter of national security, President Bush is sparing him the consequences ordinary Americans would face.

This conviction was the first moment of justice in a Bush Administration void of accountability. It’s a sad day for America when the President once again puts protecting his friends ahead of equal justice under the law.”

There's also an official Dean video online here.

***AND, I just found the transcript of Ho-Ho remarks on CNN's The Situation Room here. Scroll down about a quarter of the page. Among the former Vermont governor's comments:

That's the fundamental difference. We believe in equal justice under the law. We believe in getting out of Iraq.

Every single Republican president running for president believes in staying in Iraq and evidently supports this pardon. They are wrong. The American people, by huge numbers, think the president did the wrong thing by commuting "Scooter" Libby's sentence and they think they're doing the wrong thing by staying in Iraq.

And I do not see how any of these guys are going to get themselves elected president of the United States by supporting things that the American people really disagree with.