E.J. Dionne on Libby: "Getting mad and staying mad"

he makes all the same points that have been made since bush's outrageous decision to commute libby's sentence and draws some of the same conclusions...

[I]s it possible to avoid concluding that this was a one-time-only action rooted not in law but in politics and favoritism for an aide who loyally misled the prosecution in a case that implicated top figures of Bush's own administration?

uh... < scratches chin > no...

As Michael Abramowitz reported in Tuesday's Post: "For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department's pardon attorney." Again: This was a one-time-only ticket for one guy.

[...]

[B]y keeping Libby free, Bush can conveniently postpone a full pardon until after the 2008 election. In the meantime, Libby has no incentive to tell prosecutors anything new about what happened in this case. As liberal blogs have noted [e.g. Daily Kos, here], since he was not pardoned outright, he can use the pending appeal of his conviction to avoid testifying before Congress.

not being one to peruse conservative blogs, dionne points out something that i find a trifle surprising, if not a wee bit encouraging...

"I'm not convinced that the administration should have intervened at all," [Ed Morrissey, a staunch conservative who runs the influential Captain's Quarters blog], wrote. "The sentence fit within the sentencing guidelines championed by Republicans for years as a bulwark against soft-on-crime federal judges, even if it was on the long end of the guidelines by some interpretations. The underlying crimes go to the heart of the rule of law, and those who commit perjury and obstruction should go to prison."

dionne concludes by asking the same question i've been asking just about every other day as some new bush administration outrage is uncovered...

This commutation is an ... outrage because it involves the administration taking steps to slip accountability for its own actions. Are we just going to let this one go by?

well...? are we...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet