I am still extremely incensed. I spent today calling, e-mailing and otherwise contacting folks, from fellow travelers to the high and mighty. There are plenty of other reasons I’m totally disgusted with this administration, but like many others, I suspect this “commutation” is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Many of us who have long been simmering under the surface no longer can sit around and suffer through this administration. I, and others, are openly urging impeachment.

Smirk’s action was so blatantly self-serving it’s very difficult for anyone to really defend it properly. Aside from the compliant, mealy-mouthed Corporate Media and the loyal stalwarts of the Greedy Oppressive Pomposities (aka the G.O.P.) , I haven’t seen too many people rushing to lay out a coherent case for why Irving L. Libby should be pardoned. Throw in the fact that this “president” has one of the stingiest records in modern history regarding pardons and commutations (113 pardons, and only FOUR commutations to date), and it’s all the more curious. Again, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and convicted of perjury. In this article from Yahoo! News, you can see that

Federal court records indicate that 382 people were convicted for obstruction of justice over the past two years. Three of four were sent to prison. The average prison term was 64 months, more than five years. The largest group of defendants drew prison terms ranging from 13 months to 31 months.

What also bugs me is that Bush blathered about not getting involved in Libby’s case ” until Mr. Libby’s appeals have been exhausted.” Libby still had the Supreme Court, I believe, to appeal to regarding bail being granted while working through the appeals process, let alone a commutation or pardon. According to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney in Section 1-2.112 in the Standards for Consideration of Clemency Petitions, “The Department’s regulations require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application (28 C.F.R. § 1.2).” Someone’s definitely jumped the gun here.

It’s not as if Libby is a complete innocent when it comes to the pardon/commutation process either. Remember, he’s a lawyer– and it’s interesting to note than in his pre-Shooter career, Libby served as attorney for Marc Rich, the fugitive financier pardoned by Clinton. While he wasn’t the attorney of record when Clinton pardoned Rich, Libby worked for Rich until 2000, and thus most likely helped craft the pleadings for a pardon, the rationales, etc.

If there’s anyone left who doesn’t understand the connections and the tangled web of deceit in this whole sorry state of affairs, go here and see Professor Juan Cole’s rather simple formulation of the connections. It’s even illustrated, and will only take you a few minutes to read. For a detailed account of the Libby trial and excellent analysis of all the different aspects of the Plame Case, the trumped-up intelligence, the lies about Iraq, and much, much more, go to firedoglake. These guys are outstanding bloggers; while they’re unabashedly partisan (who isn’t these days?), a number of their regular bloggers/contributors are lawyers, and thus can more easily parse and break down the technicalities, the intricacies, and most of all the legalese. Even for someone versed in legalese, some of the language can be mind-numbing. These folks will simplify and boil entire briefings down to succinct paragraphs for you. In case you don’t have the time or energy to wade through it all (and it is a lot), here’s a particularly pertinent blog post: Why the Trail of Plame Leads to (or Through) Scooter Libby.

Quite a few news editorials are condemning the commutation, but one of the better editorials is this one, from the Vail Daily News. My favorite part is this:

Pardons and the commutation of sentences — which cannot be challenged by Congress or the courts — should not serve as free passes for the presidents’ buddies to break the law. They should be granted only when they are good for the country.

There’s been too many free passes for too many people in this administration thus far. It’s time all of us stood up and said, “No more!” The only obvious reason for a commutation is to spare a convicted criminal from having to go to prison, and still preserve his Fifth Amendment rights. Anyone care to guess who benefits from Libby keeping his mouth shut? It’s not just obstruction of justice that’s been committed here, it’s also obstruction of rationale: this administration is deliberately keeping this country from knowing the truth about how they lured the nation into the debacle known as Iraq.

Gonzales needs to go. Cheney needs to go. Bush needs to go. No more.