(H/t Sam Hasler) E.J. Dionne weighs in on the Libby pardon in a column entitled An Unpardonable Act . The heart of it is this:
The core point is that “equal justice under law” either means something or it doesn’t. In this case, all the facts we know tell us that Libby received far more than equal justice, as evidenced by the irregular way his commutation was handled.
Bush’s sudden concern for the “excessive sentence” for a convict just happens to be for a member of the inner-circle who is plausibly thought to be covering for the actions of Bush and Cheney. Bush didn’t run the decision through the Justice Department. And, he took the unprecedented action of commuting Libby’s sentence before he had spent a day of jail time. Bush is “tough on crime” until said toughness inconveniences one of his own. Dionne continues:
[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?
Well, of course not.
“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.
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