So Scooter Libby scoots away.
Hardly a shock, though I laughed out loud when I heard the news, so brazen was Bush's action.
He just doesn't care.
He doesn’t care about fairness and equality under the law.
In his commutation statement, Bush mentioned that Libby's "wife and young children have . . . suffered enormously."
Well, what about the wife and small children of the thousands of people falsely convicted in this country who are actually behind bars today?
Their suffering has been enormous.
What about the wife and small children of any of the hundreds of thousands of inmates who get longer time behind bars simply because they’re black or Latino?
Their suffering has been enormous.
What about the wife and small children of any of the 131 people Bush put to death as governor of Texas?
Their suffering has been enormous.
What about the wife and the small children of any of the people Bush has disappeared over the last six years?
Their suffering has been enormous.
But Bush extends his mercy only to his cronies, only to those who are willing to commit a crime to silence critics of his reckless war and cover up for his creepy and venal Vice President.
The smart money was on Bush waiting to free Libby until after the 2008 elections.
The smart money was wrong.
Because Bush doesn't care that much about the political ramifications.
He's always been more of a gang leader than a party leader.
And so he springs one of his henchmen.
And in the process, he covers the tracks that lead to the Vice President.
"A cloud hangs over the Vice President," Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told the jury in the Libby trial. Fitzgerald noted that Libby had lied to keep the prosecutor from unraveling any plot to out Valerie Plame. Had Libby not lied, Fitzgerald might have gotten to the bottom of that. Now Libby's defenders are saying Bush was correct to grant clemency since there was no underlying crime. But we don't know that because Libby lied!
The message that Bush has sent is loud and clear:
First, that if you rid his kingdom of the meddlesome Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, then you should have no fear of going to jail.
Second, that other loyalists who do criminal deeds in service of the President or Vice President will suffer no loss of liberty.
And third, that officials in future White Houses should rest assured that if they do the crime, they will not do the time.
This is the pinnacle of corruption: letting your staffers commit crimes that aid you politically, and then, by picking up a pen, you pick the lock to their jail cell.
Not even Nixon did that, though Bush’s Daddy did.
It's a family tradition.
When the President wields the vestigial powers of a king, which is what the pardon and clemency authority actually is, and does so to free one of his own thugs, then we don’t have the rule of law here. We have the rule of one.
Nothing could be more corrosive and disdainful not only of our system of justice but of our system of checks and balances than this act of commutation.
It's a shameful, galling, disgusting, pathetic, outrageous, embarrassing act from a President who has no shame.