Scooter's sentence commuted

The New York Times prints blog and political reactions:

John Hindraker at the Powerline blog calls Mr. Bush’s decision an “excellent resolution” to the episode: “I also think the President’s commutation of Libby’s sentence will go over well with the party’s conservative base and will contribute, to some degree, to a restoration of Bush’s standing with conservatives.”

Dan McLaughin at RedState notes that the issue is likely to resurface in the presidential campaign: “Now, we get to hear what Hillary Clinton thinks about the proper uses of the pardon power.”

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall is skeptical of the president’s reasoning for sparing Mr. Libby from jail. He writes that there is no conceivable argument for “micromanaging” the sentence: “The only basis for this decision is that Libby is the vice president’s friend, the vice president rules the president and this was the minimum necessary to keep the man silent.”

Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake, which deployed an army to live-blog the Libby trial, says Mr. Bush’s decision amounts to “throwing the rule of law out in the trash to cater to his rabid base”: “This is a shameful, self-dealing action which will have long-term political ramifications for the Bush Administration. And it should.”

Andrew Sullivan writing at The Atlantic Online concedes that he once “retained some minimal respect” for the president: “No longer. We now know full well what his beliefs are: the law is for other people, not himself, his friends or his apparatchiks.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued this: “The president’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security.

The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President’s Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”

Less than a pardon but no prison. Guess the aspens do share roots.....

Update: Tengrain has the best pic.

And Atrios of Eschaton says this:

I'm going to be mad tomorrow. I'm going to be mad tomorrow that the elite media (except Keith) won't point out that Bush's commutation of Scooter's sentence is essentially obstruction of justice. I'll be mad because that concept was regularly inserted into the narrative during the Clinton days.


Mostly I'll be mad because I have yet to see a prominent Democrat put the phrase "obstruction of justice" out there in relation to this. So perhaps my anger at the media is misplaced.