CT Blue

I am going to climb out on a limb and say that the legal “debate” about the Bush commutation will die down more quickly than the public debate. Yesterday the Times published an article (Bush Rationale on Libby Stirs Legal Debate) that contained quotes from individuals who apparently could pretend with a straight face that they believed that Bush took his own arguments seriously.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t any judges who will be so outraged at what Bush did that they might use is as a basis for what they would want to do anyway. But it isn’t precedent, and few judges are likely to treat it as such. If I were a defense lawyer I might try using it too, but I sure wouldn’t expect much success. And as to the now-corrupt Justice Department, it will simply ignore the issue and continue to push for harsh sentences for people who don’t know the president. This is a ginned up, complete non-issue, not worth writing about. which can only distract from the main issue.

Still, it could be worse. Oh, wait, it is. Look at what the Times swallows whole:

Before commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., President Bush and a small circle of advisers delved deeply into the evidence in the case, debating Mr. Libby’s guilt or innocence and whether he had in fact lied to investigators, people familiar with the deliberations said.

That process, in weeks of closely held White House discussions, led to the decision to spare Mr. Libby from a 30-month sentence rather than grant a pardon. But Mr. Bush, defending the move Tuesday, left the door open to a pardon in the future.
…
The White House deliberations in the case of Mr. Libby, a key architect of the war in Iraq who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, were scattered throughout Mr. Bush’s regular business over the past several weeks, an administration official said.

That description, along with the accounts of two Republican allies of the White House, illuminated a process that was almost clinical, with a detailed focus on the facts of the case, which stemmed from an investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity. Mr. Libby was accused of lying to investigators and was convicted on four felony counts, including perjury and obstruction of justice.

Guess who provided this information to the Times. Well, you’ll have to keep guessing, “Because the deliberations were so closely held, those who spoke about them agreed to do so only anonymously”. That is, of course, a non-reason for being anonymous. The reason is equivalent to saying that they are anonymous because it suits their purposes. I wonder if these are the same White House aides who said that Bush was reading Camus or casually discussing the Nicomachean Ethics?

Don’t these people know when they’re being used? Isn’t this how this whole thing started-with White House spin being planted by anonymous White House sources?

Let’s be clear. Bush did not spend weeks debating the rights and wrongs of pardoning Libby. He may have spent weeks figuring out the best way to do it, or the best time to do it. He may have spent weeks trying to finds some other way of keeping Scooter’s mouth shut. But he did not-I repeat, did not, spend a minute examining the merits of the case against Libby or stop to think about how a pardon would jibe with his “tough on crime” policies. This was the decision of the head of a criminal enterprise who feels the heat coming just a little too close-nothing more and nothing less. And to answer my own question, these people are perfectly aware that they are being spun. They apparently think that what they are told by White House spinners is “news” because it is being spun by insiders. Their job, as they see it, is to pass the spin along, unfiltered by any pesky examination of the facts.