So the Democrats in Congress want to hold hearings into President Bush's commutation of a portion of Scooter Libby's perjury sentence. This will give them a chance to generate a lot of sound a fury, that the media will happily parrot. But in the end it will signify nothing.

To clear things up first, the commutation doesn't bother me too much. Given the extraordinarily light punishment of Sandy Berger for stealing and destroying classified documents and the rather timid slap on the wrist given to former President Clinton in his perjury plea deal, this takes a step toward restoring some sort of cosmic balance of injustices. And given that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's investigation uncovered the source who leak of Valerie Plame's identity, Richard Armitage, in about a day, it seems clear that having identified that there was no underlying crime he just continued on until he could nail someone in the administration for something.

And when the Democrats convene their hearing they will find that the authority of the president to do what he did is written into the Constitution. They will find that the only limit the Constitution places on that authority is that it cannot be exercised in cases of impeachment. It wont take them long to realize that Libby was not impeached. That's pretty much the end of that.

The reasons for the commutation, as long as there was no quid pro quo (like say a large donation to the Bush Library) there is really no issue. The President can pardon or commute for whatever damned reason he wants. He could have done it for political reasons, he could have done it because he thinks Scooter is a cute name or he likes his butt.

But they will have their hearing. There will be sound and fury. And it will signify nothing.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 07:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment