I really haven't followed the case and its stultifying minutiae carefully, so I won't comment on the defendant's innocence or guilt. However, some statements are self-evidently silly and histrionic, and Andrew Sullivan has made the issuance of them his signature blog form:
It is hard to think of an action more contemptuous of the rule of law – except for so many decisions made by this lawless president, acting as a monarch. De facto pardoning or commuting of a sentence was once a royal prerogative that even kings reserved for those they didn't know, convicted clearly unjustly, whose sentence had often largely been served. And yet Bush uses it in office for a friend, hours after the failure of his appeal, to protect his own political and legal liability for jeopardizing intelligence and compromising national security.
The phrase bandied around the Daily Dish for last twelve hours has been "rule of law." In what sense has this president violated such an adamantine concept with respect to Scooter Libby, exercising, as is his full constitutional right, the ability to pardon or grant clemency to convicted criminals?
Timothy Noah — surely another a beetle-browed agent of Dick Cheney's master plan — fills in some of the abuse-of-power blanks that the Saint Sebastian of the Right evidently felt were too niggling to fill in himself:
Judge Reggie Walton went overboard in sentencing Libby to 30 months. This was about twice as long as the prison term recommended by the court's probation office, and if Libby hadn't been a high-ranking government official, there's a decent chance he would have gotten off with probation, a stiff fine, and likely disbarment. Walton gave Libby 30 months and a $250,000 fine, then further twisted the knife by denying Libby's routine request to delay the sentence while his lawyers appealed it. (Libby was duly assigned the federal prison register number 28301-016, but Libby's lawyers managed to move quickly enough to keep Libby out of the slammer until his appeal was denied on July 2, the same day Bush commuted his sentence.) The voluminous pleas for leniency from Libby's A-list friends seem to have annoyed Walton, who erred on the side of severity not in spite of Libby's high position in government but because of it. Walton wanted to make an example of him.
The term for Walton in conservative circles would be "activist judge." But far be it from the author of The Conservative Soul to know one when he sees it.
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