The Editors make a good point.
Bush, on overturning the deeply-held philosophy with which he presided over 152 executions in Texas:
I don’t believe my role [as governor] is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own, unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair.
The decision to replace the verdict of the jury in the Scooter Libby case certainly flies in the face of Bush’s stated philosophy here. But it is hardly surprising. Judith Miller spent from July 7 to September 29, 2005 in prison to protect Libby. And Scooter Libby will not have to spend a day behind bars.
To be honest, Libby knew all along that he could lie to the FBI, the Justice Department, and a grand jury with impunity. He acted accordingly.
Idiots like Joseph DiGenova keep insisting that Libby wasn’t the first person to leak Valerie Wilson’s profession. It doesn’t matter whether he was first. All that matters is whether he leaked her profession while being aware that she was covert. That was a hard case to prove and it was made more difficult by Libby’s obstruction of justice.
Patrick Fitzgerald decided that 30 months in prison was a decent punishment for the underlying crime, so he didn’t charge the underlying crime. I don’t know why he didn’t charge Karl Rove and Richard Armitage. My impression is that Armitage didn’t realize that Ms. Wilson was covert, that he was contrite, and he cooperated with the investigation. I think Karl Rove corrected lies he made to the grand jury and showed some private contrition. I suspect Fitzgerald felt like that was sufficient to let him off of perjury charges. He probably couldn’t prove Rove’s state of mind on whether he knew Ms. Wilson was covert. So Rove walked.
Libby was different. Fitz had Libby discussing Wilson’s status with David Addington and telling Ari Fleischer that the information was ‘hush-hush and on the Q-T.” Clearly he knew Ms. Wilson’s job and that he would be ruining her career if he revealed where she worked. And he never would have done something like that without the permission and even direction of the vice-president.
The commutation of Libby’s sentence is really plain and simple obstruction of justice. It’s the finalization of a quid pro quo. The President has a right to pardon people and commute their sentences, but Congress has a right to impeach the President and vice-president if they believe they’ve used their constitutional powers to cover up their own crimes. It will be difficult to prove that there was a quid pro quo, but the country already believes it. And that is the most important part of any impeachment case…convincing the public that the administration has made gross violations of law.
