Even when obligingly regurgitated, the White House can't get its story straight. Compare this:

Pardons are typically reviewed by the Justice Department and sent to the president for a final determination. But a former administration official said that in this case the White House had sent a message of “we’re not going through the usual pardon scrub, we’re going through this one ourselves.”

To this:

Before Mr. Bush spoke at Walter Reed, his press secretary, Tony Snow, fended off an unruly press corps, whose members demanded to know why Mr. Libby had received special treatment. Mr. Snow insisted that he had not, saying the case had been handled in a “routine manner.” “The president does not look upon this as granting a favor to anyone,” Mr. Snow said, “and to do that is to misconstrue the nature of the deliberations.”

There is something ironic in the lying being done to defend releasing a convicted perjurer from his sentence.

Given our President's stunning disregard for the rule of law this week, and that it's the Fourth of July, I'm wondering what thoughts you all have on patriotism and liberty and on how this Administration has driven a stake in the heart of both.

For opposing the war, we're called unpatriotic. Our civil liberties have been disregarded by everything from the NSA warrantless monitoring program to no-fly lists, the Real I.D. Act and federal immigration raids on workplaces.

Scooter Libby, convicted of lying and obstructing justice at a trial conducted openly and with full due process, who was sentenced in accordance with, not outside the law, has been given a get-out-of jail-free card based on cronyism at best and fear that if he talked, he'd sell out others in the corrupt administration, at worst.

So, what are you celebrating today? And if you haven't read it in a while, here's the Declaration of Independence.

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The New York Times reports the Scooter Libby commutation may just set off a debate about sentencing in the country.

I hope so. As outraged as I was Monday afternoon when I first heard the news, my anger just has continued to build.

Tuesday afternoon, I was discussing the commutation on Rachel Maddow's Air America radio show. I could hear my voice, filled with anger, rising in pitch as I spoke.

How did I get here? Just last month, when Libby was sentenced, I, too, thought the lower guideline range of 15 to 21 months would be adopted. I would not have been upset if the Judge had departed from the guidelines and imposed a split sentence of 5 months in prison and 5 months on home detention. I even opined that I thought Libby had met the legal test for an appeal bond.

So where is my outrage coming from? It has little to do with Libby and everything to do with Bush, special treatment and the federal sentencing system that applies to everyone else in America.

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A two minute AP video clip with Bush's statement defending Scooter Libby's prison sentence commutation and Joe Wilson and Hillary's reaction.

[Click on link, not the picture, then click "play".]

Via pontificator, this is priceless:

Section 3583 does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervissd release without first completing a term of incarceration. . . .

[fn 1] If either party believes that it would be helpful to seek clarification from the White House regarding the President's position on the proper interpretation of Section 3583 . . . they are encouraged to do so

Hahahahaha! BushCo, incompetent even in corruption. Hilarious!

Crooks and Liars has the transcript and the video of Keith Olbermann's special comment tonight on Countdown in which he calls on Bush to resign from office.

Some highlights:

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

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Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail with Bill in Iowa today, tore into President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby. She told the Associated Press:

"I believe that presidential pardon authority is available to any president, and almost all presidents have exercised it," Clinton told the AP. "This (the Libby decision) was clearly an effort to protect the White House. ... There isn't any doubt now, what we know is that Libby was carrying out the implicit or explicit wishes of the vice president, or maybe the president as well, in the further effort to stifle dissent."

She also released this statement:

"Today's decision is yet another example that this Administration simply considers itself above the law. This case arose from the Administration's politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies. Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House's efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

Hillary also distinguished the Clinton pardons from the Scooter commutation:

Her husband's pardons, issued in the closing hours of his presidency, were simply routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none were aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy, she said.

Via Discourse.net and the SDFL blog:

In the Jose Padilla trial, jurors showed up today all dressed up. Row one in red. Row two in white. And row three in blue. I’m not kidding.

This reminds me of when when the Scooter Libby dressed in red shirts for Valentine's Day.

The Padilla jury has dressed in coordinating colors before:

One time it was all black. Last Friday all the women wore pink and the men blue.

Analysis, anyone?

If President Bush thought announcing Scooter Libby's commutation just before the 4th of July would decrease media attention or criticism, he was wrong. It's a firestorm out there, and it keeps on growing.

Check out Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post, his column is filled with unanswered questions about Libby and Cheney and has scores of links to news articles, blog posts and editorial page criticism.

Arianna educates the media that this is not a left or right issue, it's a right or wrong issue, and there's plenty of conservative criticism of Bush's action.

Sentencing Law and Policy has a roundup of legal commentary.

Rep. John Conyers promises to hold hearings on the commutation. The first will be Wednesday, July 11, at 10:15 am in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Jane and Marcy will be there live-blogging for Firedoglake. They need donations. Please, give what you can.

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Connie Chasseur: Who would catch a criminal, and then let him go free?

Mary Chasseur: Republicans.

I had a conversation with a prosecutor today about a two level enhancement for obstruction on a client in custody. I told her that the Executive Branch doesn't count obstruction as a jailable offense, so he should not get the two level enhancement.

She was not amused.  

None of us are.

This piece by Alan Dershowitz made me laugh out loud:

The appellate judges had to see that Libby's arguments on appeal were sound and strong -- that under existing law he was entitled to bail pending appeal. (That is why I joined several other law professors in filing an amicus brief on this limited issue.)

Hahahahahahahahahaha. But of course brave Sir Alan. YOU filed an amicus brief. How could the Appellate Court not have recognized the utter brilliance and merit of your argument? It had to be political.

Too funny. This guy is a scream.

Prosecutorial misconduct is so often ignored or winked at by judges that it's refreshing to find a judge who is willing to take the problem seriously. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Boston, Mark Wolf, wrote to Alberto Gonzales (for all the good it will do) complaining that the Justice Department's private reprimand of AUSA Jeffrey Auerhahn was an unduly lenient response to Auerhahn's decision to withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense. That misconduct, in the words of Judge Wolf, “required the release from prison of a capo in the Patriarca family of La Cosa Nostra.”

“A mere secret, written reprimand,” Chief Judge Wolf wrote on Friday, “would not ordinarily be a sufficient sanction for the serious, intentional, repeated and consequential misconduct by Mr. Auerhahn.”

Oddly, although the Justice Department's internal Office of Professional Responsibility concluded in 2005 that the evidence was exculpatory and that Auerhahn had a duty to disclose it, the Department argued in a 2006 brief that the evidence wasn't material and that disclosure wasn't required. The author of that brief apparently didn't receive the OPR memo.

In his letter to Mr. Gonzales, Judge Wolf expressed dismay over the department’s conflicting positions. “It is disturbing,” Judge Wolf wrote, “that the Department of Justice continued to advocate positions which O.P.R. had flatly rejected.”

Disturbing but not surprising. We can expect the response from Gonzales to be a barely stifled yawn. Judge Wolf asked state disciplinary authorities in Massachusetts to take their own look at Auerhahn's misconduct. Disciplinary complaints about proseuctors are rarely lodged by judges, so there's some hope that the state will take it seriously.