I have tried to make this point in comments in several recent diaries but it does not seem to get much notice so I will try it more directly.
I have a totally different take than most do on the commutation of Libby's sentence and the reason is below the fold.
One of the earliest things I learned about life was the simple dictum that is the title of this diary -
Desperate people do desperate things.
My view on the commutation of Scooter Libby is just that.
It is the desperate act of a desperate man; a sign of weakness not of strength, a sign of panic not of a man simply arrogantly ignoring the rule of law.
This is not a man sticking his middle finger into the camera. It is a man being blackmailed by one of his own henchman and being forced to bail him out.
The only problem is that the commutation simply prolongs the inevitable, it does not put it to rest and the President, oddly, recognizes this even though most do not.
High Treason has been committed by high people in the highest level of Government and now higher people still have had to intervene in what will become a failed attempt to forestall the inevitable.
By this act the President has openly involved himself in the obstruction of an investigation into the most serious of crimes.
At the very least his place in history will now be along side Benedict Arnold and not the various men of stature who have held the office.
At worst, he too will one day stand in the dock accused of at least aiding and abetting traitors to the country and possibly accused of being a participant in an act for which the penalty is death.
Such things do not sit slightly on the mind of even the most imperceptive of men and so he flails about and begins the process of his own undoing.
Any number of things can happen next. All of them will gnaw at the President’s will and we already know he is not a man of great courage
Scooter may well be called before the Congress and immunized and given the chance to either lie again or to come clean.
Because he might well choose to come clean rather than face jail again, he is a danger to the President and the Vice President as long as he lives and Scooter has to realize this too. Jail may start to look like an acceptable alternative to some others that will swarm through his consciousness like some never ending nightmare.
Or Fitzpatrick may well pick up the gauntlet again and call another Grand Jury - this one not to investigate charges of perjury and obstruction but a charge of conspiracy to commit high treason.
An even bigger danger is completely of the President’s own making. In just 18 months a new unitary President ( these genies never go back in the bottle ) will be sworn in and who is to say that he or she would not use the Patriot Act and secret prisons and aggressive rendition to coax the truth out of the little coward, who once gladly let Judy Miller do his time.
So relax and take heart. Everything may be unfolding exactly as we would wish. In the meantime the sleep of three men will continue to be very troubled and their waking hours will be filled with terrifying thoughts of secret prisons and barbarous acts of torture and then in the end the penalty for treason is death.