I’ve written too much about Scooter Libby over the last two years to let today’s big news go by without comment (see previous posts). Today, President Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s two and half year prison sentence. Bush didn’t pardon Libby, he merely said that Libby would not have to go to jail. Libby will still have to serve probation, pay a $250,000 fine, and identify himself as a convicted felon. I have always held that if someone commits a crime, then they should pay their debt to society. But the sound and fury that you are hearing from the left side of the talking head class is disingenuous outrage.

The call from the Wall Street Journal is for the president to pardon Scooter Libby and to bring an end to the pseudo-scandal known as “Plamegate.” I have been writing about this scandal for over a year (see previous posts) and have become increasingly aware that this entire dust-up was more about partisan politics than it was about truth–at least insofar as it has been covered in the media.Here is what we know today. Richard Armitage leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak. Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush did not. I know this will be a shocker to Joe Wilson who was hoping to see…

The New York Times is reporting that the Vice-President’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, is to be indicted tomorrow for making false statements under oath. Karl Rove will not be indicted but will remain under investigation. Yes, you heard it right. According to the Times’ reporting, there won’t be any indictments for leaking the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame (the original reason for the investigation). But don’t you worry. The opponents of this administration will spin this as if Libby and Rove are being charged with leaking her identity. Mark my words. Tomorrow morning, the hacks will be indicting the whole administration for something that the grand jury…

There’s already talk today about a potential pardon for the convicted felon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The Wall Street Journal and the National Review are calling for Bush to pardon Libby immediately, while Senate majority leader Harry Reid is demanding that Bush pledge never to pardon him. As the Los Angeles Times reports, this will be a controversy that is likely to follow President Bush through the rest of his term.

As far as the pundit class is concerned, the trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was never about lying under oath. It is and always has been about putting the Iraq War on trial. The first item I read covering Libby’s guilty verdict was from NBC news. Directly following the lead are these lines:

As I was leaving my house to go to work today, I saw the reporters on CNN breathlessly reporting the breaking news about Scooter Libby. I didn’t have time to do anything but listen to a couple of minutes of the report and to read the banners at the bottom of the screen. The gist of the report was this. Scooter Libby, who is under indictment and who is thought to have leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, testified that President Bush authorized Libby to leak classified material to the press. This authorization came through Vice President Cheney. The report was clearly slanted to link Bush and…

I cannot recommend highly enough Norman Podhoretz’s recent essay “Who Is Lying About Iraq?” (available in html and pdf). It is a singular word of sane analysis among a din of media reporting that merely parrots anti-war talking points. I have been writing about this topic a great deal lately because opponents of the Iraq War have been making hay out of Scooter Libby’s indictment (read here, here, here, and here). They have used the indictment to slander President Bush by claiming he lied in order to dupe the nation into going to war.

Stephen F. Hayes, Senior Writer for The Weekly Standard In a previous post, I argued that the attempt to discredit the Iraq war on the basis of the indictment of Scooter Libby is a “non-sequitor.” Stephen Hayes says essentially the same thing in the most recent issue of The Weekly Standard: In the literal sense, attempts to link the case for war in Iraq to the Fitzgerald investigation are illogical. If a White House official lied to a grand jury in 2004, as Fitzgerald contends, that fact has little bearing on the case made for war in Iraq in 2002 (source). I might have alleged that Hayes has been reading…