The Dish

The decision to display presidential contempt for the justice system was made "alone":

For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

Under the circumstances, it’s clear that Cheney was involved. When there are no normal channels of governance in this White House, it means the fusion of Cheney-Bush acting as extra-legal agents of their own power. We really no longer have the rule of law operating. We have the privileges and lies and policies of two men. The law is no competitor. And shamelessness is their ally.

Provincetown, Massachusetts, 12.30 am.

They keep repeating the line that only the "left" will be angry. Dean Barnett hauls it out. Glenn Reynolds echoes. K-Lo is on the meme. Is it now the conservative position that only left-wingers actually object to people getting away with perjury? For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Republican base gives a damn about Scooter Libby. But many others now will. The defense of the commutation is complicated and unpersuasive. The case against it is simple: You don’t get a cleaner example of different justice for the rich and powerful. It seems to me that real conservatives – not the lawless hoodlums now parading under that banner – should be as outraged as anyone. This man risked national security for political payback, and perjured himself to cover it up. This commutation will rightly become a symbol of a great deal of rot in Washington that needs to be swept clean. Get out that broom.

More proof that he is the cipher for the same crew of perjurers and leakers. Now let’s see what Giuliani says. Mr former prosecutor, you want to let connected elite perjurers off the hook?

"I respect the jury’s verdict.  But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

That’s the president micromanaging the wheels of justice. Remember that Mr Bush is notoriously pardon-averse. He has only issued 113 pardons in nearly seven years. In Texas, he sent many, many people to the execution room, even those, like Karla Faye Tucker, who had genuinely expressed remorse and been born again. In fact, he famously mocked her petition for clemency. So she was killed. But Bush finds a way to spare his own apparatchik from mere months in jail for a clear case of perjury.

If this shores up his conservative base, then his conservative base has no principles. They impeached Clinton for the same crime. But they let their own go free. If you needed a reason to rid Washington of the president’s corrupt party, you just got one. Get angrier.

The latest poll from SurveyUSA:

Seven months before the newly accelerated and suddenly critical California Republican Primary, the contest re-stabilizes, with Rudolph Giuliani 13 points ahead of John McCain and Fred Thompson, who tie for 2nd place, according to a SurveyUSA poll of likely GOP Primary voters, conducted exclusively for KABC-TV Los Angeles, KPIX-TV San Francisco, and KGTV-TV San Diego. Giuliani’s 13-point advantage today is identical to his lead 60 days ago, in SurveyUSA’s May 2007 tracking poll, and a slight increase from the 7-point advantage Giuliani had in June. Fred Thompson, who went from 11 points in May to 21 points is June, has stopped climbing, and settles in at 19 points in July. Is this Thompson’s ceiling? Or has Thompson, whose official entry into the race may come at any moment, not yet begun to fight?

The next election begins:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years."

A great move by Obama. This has to be hung around every Republican’s neck. They are now the party of corruption, irresponsibility in national security, and perjury. The Republican party impeached the last president for perjury over sexual harassment. But they commute the sentence of a man who perjured himself in part because he leaked a national security secret. That tells you everything. They care more about their privileged friends than the rule of law. We now know that for sure.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

Matt’s take:

We have a failed stab at immigration reform, massive tax cuts that saddled the country with big debts but produced a macroeconomic situation worse than that prevailing under his predecessor’s policies, an increase in the level of subsidies for fossil fuel producers, an increase in the level of farm subsidies, a Medicare reform structured as a large subsidy to health insurance and pharmaceutical firms, the institutionalized use of torture and arbitrary detention, and a return of illegal domestic surveillance. Also — No Child Left Behind, and an invasion of Afghanistan whose goals, though eminently justified, have not been achieved.

Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln … ?

A reader writes:

Some of the reaction to this school segregation case has really brought out the worst of what you call the Left’s fundamentalism. I mean I am just absolutely floored by this post at TPM Cafe, which says we "shouldn’t put up with this" from the court. The logic of the post seems to suggest that judicial review should be eliminated.

It’s seems a very similar reponse to the one Delay and company had to the Schiavo case. We didn’t get the ruling we want so the court better look out.

But in a way it’s worse, because the court didn’t really rule against liberals as much as the author believes. Justice Kennedy left open ways to achieve the goal of diversity in schools so long as you don’t do so by racial classification on an individual basis. Yet because a specific means is thrown out the author says the court has ruled in favor of separate but equal. It’s just completely unhinged from reality.

Remember when extraordinary efforts to increase racial diversity were pitched as temporary?

Perjury in defense of wartime deception is now okay, as far as the president is concerned. I’m surprised by Bush’s chutzpah. I retained some minimal respect. No longer. We now know full well what his beliefs are: the law is for other people, not himself, his friends or his apparatchiks.