The Dish

It’s asked of Tony Snow:

PRESS: "If there are more than 3,000 current petitions for commutation — not pardons, but commutation — in the federal system, under President Bush, will all 3,000 of those be held to the same standard that the president applied to Scooter Libby?"

SNOW: "I don’t know."

If Bush is not actually, you know, creating one system of justice for his friends and employees and another for everyone else, why doesn’t Snow have an answer to that question? Of course, this is an egregious abuse of presidential power. But how does that make it different from much of the rest of Bush’s presidency? The answer is: it’s constitutional. I guess we have to be grateful for small mercies.

A brief round-up of their previous position:

"Lying under oath strikes at the heart of our system of justice and the rule of law. It does not matter in the least what the perjury is about," – Robert Bork and James Rosen, National Review.

"And we know that when a person testifies under oath that he doesn’t remember something when in fact he does, he has committed perjury," – Bill Bennett, Wall Street Journal.

Rarely has an intellectual movement been exposed so brutally as a power-grubbing scam.

Unbelievable:

A reader writes:

Pakistan is perhaps the worst covered country in the American media — you need start reading about it before you make hysterical remarks about it being on the verge of an Islamic takeover. There are real dangers there but you clearly do not understand them.

Pakistan is not on the verge of an Islamist takeover. Islamist groups make up a small but very vocal part of Pakistani political life and they most definitely are a menace, globally and more often domestically. But there is no prospect of them taking over. Musharraf is their patron, not their opponent. At the last election, which was very heavily rigged by the military, the six Islamist parties (coerced together by the ISI even though they all loathe each other) won just 11.3 per cent of the vote. In Indonesia Islamist parties won 18 per cent and nobody is seriously suggesting an Islamist takeover there. Democracy will help reduce the Islamist influence — a return to secular democratic rule will cut back the growth in jihadi activity.

Jihadi groups rely on the military for support and they serve the military by providing jihadis to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan and in terrorist attacks against Indian and western targets. They also provide the military with a way to maintain their important links to the US – Musharraf stirs up these groups with one hand and then points to them as a great threat with the other so as to ensure a constant flow of US dollars.

Jeff Lomonaco saw the logic weeks ago:

It is precisely out of the desire to avoid such uncomfortable questions for himself and his vice president that President Bush is likely not to pardon Libby but to commute his sentence, or otherwise keep him out of prison without fully clearing him. That would enable Libby to remain free while he seeks legal vindication through the appeals process. But more importantly, it would enable Bush and Cheney to continue the strategy they have successfully pursued in deterring journalists seeking their explanations with claims that they shouldn’t comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Cheney would no longer have such a rationale for evading the press’ questions – nor would Libby be able to claim the right against self-incrimination to resist testifying before Congress about the role that Cheney and Bush played in directing his conduct.

But if Bush simply commutes Libby’s prison sentence without effectively vacating Libby’s conviction, the appeals process goes forward and Bush and Cheney continue to have their rationale for not answering the press’ questions. This strategy would also have the added benefit for Bush of eliminating the chance, however remote, that under the pressure of prison time away from his family and abandoned by the White House he served loyally, Libby himself would tell the true story of his own and others’ conduct.

A reader suggests it’s a signal to other administration officials that they will be looked after if they keep lying or stonewalling to the press and Congress in the next eighteen months:

The commutation of Libby’s sentence was a Machiavellian move meant to send a message to people who work for the Administration. The message from the President and the Vice President is "we will protect the loyal". The script of this presidency is more like the Sopranos than the West Wing.  Like the mafia, loyalty is critical to the survival of this Administration.  Just like the mafia, Cheney and Bush often ask Administration officials to operate outside the law, or at the very least, in the gray area and without Congressional or judicial approval. If Libby were sent to jail, this could have a devastating effect on the loyalty that Administration officials show to Bush and Cheney. The people in the Administration would start to worry more about their own skin and less about pleasing their bosses.

During the next 18 months of the Bush presidency the Democratic Congress will issue subpoenas to Administration officials on any number of scandals emanating from the White House, some known (Iraq and the firing of the prosecutors) and some still unknown.

Any Administration official who is required to testify in Congress and is aware of wrong-doing on the part of the White House will be worried that they could end up in jail like Scooter if they are not hyper-vigilant about the truth. If Scooter went to jail these potential Administration witnesses in future Congressional hearings would be less likely to be "team players" for the White House. The importance of the Libby pardon is that it lets these potential Administration witnesses know that the President will protect them and nobody else will. (See the press and the Democrats howling for Scooter’s head.) This will help Bush and Cheney keep a unified front against a hostile Congress.

For those who say Bush had a principled reason for granting clemency… Fogetaboutit.  This is all about self preservation.

This is what David said about the Clinton pardon scandal:

"And this was the essential problem, it was the going around the Justice Department that created all the scandals that are now flowering."

Bush circumvented all the usual channels in commuting Libby’s sentence. He didn’t even consult the prosecutor his own Justice Department had assigned. Now read Brooks’ column this morning.

The latest bombshell from the royal court.

The DOJ standards don’t apply to Bush:

"Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence."

It’s good to be the king!

In case you’re not mad enough.