Throw away the key

Watching the coverage of the Libby trail last night, I had worked myself all up - completely unable to decide which reason for clemency offered by the Libby defense was more galling:

• "but I have kids" Oh, please. We have two million people behind bars in this country - you think we don't send moms and dads to prison? We send single moms to jail, pal and unlike you, most of them can't afford to have nannies.
  
  
• "listen to all of these testimonials about my good character" Yes, listen to them. Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld. A veritable who's-who of disgraced public servants. Everybody gets to have their friends speak for them at this stage, and frankly your friends’ opinion of you should factor in about as often as it would for other defendants: practically never.
  
  
• "but I have already been punished..." This one really scales the heights of unmitigated gall. Libby's arguing that being a convicted felon, suffering the public embarrassment that goes with it and paying for his legal defense has been such a burden that additional punishment is unnecessary or unwarranted. It would be one thing if Libby had been sitting in jail during his trial, because he couldn't make bail - but last I checked, he's been a free man - pending his conviction and sentencing.
  
  The loss of his reputation? That's kind of a self inflicted wound, wouldn't you agree?

and then there's the capstone:

• "but I have a reputation of great public service" Yes. Yes you do. And it's over now - thanks to your own actions Mr. Libby. This reputation actually makes this offense worse. You've done all these great things and worked so hard. But when you were put before a Grand Jury, you chose to lie. You know the rules, you're a lawyer fer crissake, so you can't say you blundered into a misstatement or some contrived "perjury trap."

All of this leads into the most infuriating aspect of a person who seeks to trivialize their having been charged or convicted of perjury: There is no such thing as a "perjury trap." There are so many ways out of a perjury conviction. You can amend your testimony, you can clarify your testimony. Sure, saying "Hey, you know what? I just remembered that what I said before was wrong... Here's the deal..." will make you look like an idiot, but that's a helluva lot better than a felony conviction.

No, this turkey lies to the F.B.I., lies to a federal prosecutor, and then lies to the grand jury on multiple occasions. This was not a slip of the tongue, this was not a momentary lapse in recollection, this was a deliberate pattern of deception.

Why does he do this?

Likely a mixture of

1. He does not want to reveal facts that will prolong the Valerie Plame investigation; and
2. He does not believe he will be caught.

Well, he turns out to be right on 1 and wrong on 2.

Having agreed to take the bullet for his bosses, he is now whining about getting shot.
----

With the sentencing over, the talking heads now mull over the possibility of a presidential pardon. This has been advocated to an appalling degree by the GOP partisans, since it became clear that Mr. Libby was going to go down. It is clear that the Libby defense team has been positioning themselves for a pardon since the very beginning. Playing on the family suffering angle, how poor Mr. Libby is just a fall guy, etc.

Setting their otherworldly perspective aside; there are countless reasons why Mr. Libby should not be pardoned by this president. First on the list is that the President would be pardoning a subordinate for conduct that was performed in his service. Absent pardoning himself for his own misdeeds, there is no greater conflict of interest for the use of this power.

Normally, I would think that any president would see this easily and steer way the hell away from the issue.
But there are three unavoidable truths:

1. There are no limits on the use of presidential pardons - there are traditions, there are protocols, there are controversies - but nothing can prevent or undo a pardon;
2. This President has shown little restraint when faced with choices that went against established conventions, but advanced his personal agenda; and
3. The President is not up for re-election, and is in the process of being thrown under the bus by his fellow conservatives.

And so, I'm afraid that some time before January 20, 2009, Mr. Libby's name will appear on a document that will make this sorry episode that much worse.

I don't know how else it can be said: the guy doesn't deserve it. But these days, deserves got nothing to do with it.