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.

More...

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.

Tell us about a post you read that you particularly liked today.

I really enjoyed this one from Matt Yglesias:

I guess I'm glad that after relentlessly propagandizing on Scooter Libby's behalf, Fred Hiatt has decided that commuting the entirely of Libby's sentence was the wrong thing to do, but I would have traded that small concession to reality for them not making reference to Libby's "long and distinguished record of public service." What record? What distinction? As best I can tell, Libby has done exactly two things in government service -- he's worked for Paul Wolfowitz and he's worked for Dick Cheney.

. . . Hilariously, of Libby's two patrons Wolfowitz is the less embarrassing one. . . .

There's a record of service here, but it's not distinguished. Indeed, at 11-12 years it's not even all that long. Joe Wilson had a long career of distinguished service. Valerie Plame had a long career of distinguished service. Libby had a medium length career that mostly lacked distinction and involved the occasional -- but extremely accute -- lapse into catastrophe, before he found himself resigning because he'd been caught breaking the law.

Heh. Tell us about the piece you enjoyed the most today.

Dave Johnson writes:

No Choice But Impeachment
The Democrats in Congress have been trying to avoid having to face what we are dealing with in this country at this time. . . .

Some Left blogs are trying to avoid having to face what we are dealing with when it comes to impeachment - that it has no chance of removing the President. 17 Republican Senators will NEVER EVER vote to remove President Bush no matter what.

So let's discuss impeachment realistically - as a symbolic gesture. Does it help? Harm? I'll give you my view on the flip.

President Bush said yesterday:

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation.The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

(Emphasis supplied.) Tony Snow said today:

"The reason I'm not going to say I'm not going to close a door on a pardon," Snow said, "Scooter Libby may petition for one." "The president thinks that he has dealt with the situation properly," he added. "There is always a possibility or there's an avenue open for anybody to petition for consideration of a pardon."

So the question is how long lasting is "long-lasting" in Bushworld? I predict approximately 18 months.

Update [2007-7-3 14:16:25 by Big Tent Democrat]: From the horse's mouth:

"As to the future, I rule nothing in and nothing out," the president said a day after commuting Libby's 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case.

Thanks squeaky.

At Huffpo's request, I put together several of my strands of thought on the Libby commutation, added a few and put them in a single post, Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Bush.

Update: The Washington Post reports Bush didn't run the decision through DOJ channels.

Here's the video of Marcy Wheeler on Hardball.

The New York Times castigates Bush for Libby's commutation:

Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

Orin Kerr:

I find Bush's action very troubling because of the obvious special treatment Libby received. President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead. Come to think of it, I don't know if Bush has ever actually used his powers to get one single person out of jail even one day early. If there are such cases, they are certainly few and far between. So Libby's treatment was very special indeed.