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Yet another disgraceful Bush "act"

No, it doesn't come as any surprise that George Bush has allowed Scooter Libby escape a term in jail - as ordered by the judge at the Libby trial. Why should it? Because the track record of the Bush White House is so utterly appalling and without any indication of scruples, let alone a respect for law, decency and the truth.

David Corn, writing in The Nation hits the nail on the head:

"It's appropriate.

The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying by commuting his sentence. Before the ink was dry on today's court order denying Scooter Libby's latest appeal--a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction--George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence."

In analysing the background to the commutation Corn concludes:

"The foundation of a democratic judicial system is that the sentence fits the crime. In this instance, the commutation fits the administration."

Over at Mother Jones they have this to say about the Bush action in commuting the Libby jail sentence:

"Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet. And there's no good news for the GOP in sight. So why would the president decide to commute the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury, and making false statements in the Plamegate affair, now and not at the end of his term, when everybody expected it? After all a Cable News Network/Opinion Research survey conducted after Libby's March 6 conviction found that 69% of voters are against a pardon (though commuting is only perhaps a first step toward that); only 18% were in favor of a pardon.

The answer seems to be that the base demanded it. As Edwin Chen of Bloomberg News notes:

At the same time, a pro-Libby firestorm was being fanned by self-described conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts, and many conservative leaders asked the president to step in. Until now Bush had stayed out of the case, with his aides saying he would let the appeal go forward. Libby's supporters argued that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was over-zealous in prosecuting Libby for lying to investigators when no one was charged over the actual leak of Plame's status as a Central Intelligence Agency official."

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