Commuted.
 

Funny how the conservatives who have been agitating about the harsh sentence Libby got don't otherwise seem to have a problem with the Sentencing Guidelines. The "proportionality" here is that Libby got the same sentence that other perjurers get.

eta: From Fitzpatrick's statement:

• We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as "excessive." The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

Ty's candidate
 

W - A - T - E - R

eta: Orin Kerr (no lefty):

• As I understand it, Bush political appointee James Comey named Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame leak. Bush political appointee and career prosecutor Fitzgerald filed an indictment and went to trial before Bush political appointee Reggie Walton. A jury convicted Libby, and Bush political appointee Walton sentenced him. At sentencing, Bush political appointee Judge Walton described the evidence against Libby as "overwhelming" and concluded that a 30-month sentence was appropriate. And yet the claim, as I understand it, is that the Libby prosecution was the work of political enemies who were just trying to hurt the Bush Administration.

Ty's candidate
 

post hoc. Penske says hi, and that he hasn't tried canned wine yet.

Six Days of the Condor.
 

Yes I was. And I forgave lying to me about not having had sexual relations with that woman, but I didn't forgive Marc Rich.

And Susan McDougal did time.

Six Days of the Condor.
 

Scooter Libby wasn't. He represented him.

Ty's candidate
 

Hmmmm . . . I wonder if she wasn't producing the kind of information on Iraq that Cheney wanted to hear . . .

Six Days of the Condor.
 

David Boaz of Cato has some additional examples of folks in the clink.

• [T]here are plenty of other people who deserve presidential pardons or commutations. Families Against Mandatory Minimums has highlighted a number of good cases here:
  
  * Mandy Martinson — 15 years for helping her boyfriend count his drug-dealing money.
  
  * DeJarion Echols — 20 years for selling a small amount of crack and owning a gun, causing Reagan-appointed federal judge Walter S. Smith, Jr. to say, “This is one of those situations where I’d like to see a congressman sitting before me.”
  
  * Weldon Angelos — 55 years for minor marijuana and gun charges, causing the George W. Bush-appointed judge Paul Cassell, previously best known for pressing the courts to overturn the Miranda decision, to call the mandatory sentence in this case “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.”
  
  * Anthea Harris — 15 years when members of her husband’s drug ring received sentence reductions to testify against her, although she had not been directly involved in the business.
  
  A compassionate conservative should also use the pardon power to head off the DEA’s war against doctors who help patients alleviate pain. He could start by pardoning Dr. Ronald McIver, sentenced to 30 years for prescribing Oxycontin and other drugs to patients in severe pain. Or Dr. William Hurwitz of Virginia, sentenced to 25 years but then granted a retrial, convicted again, and awaiting sentencing, which could still be 10 years.
  
  Commute these sentences, Mr. President.

Commuted.
 

I understand that.

For my part, I think that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are an abomination -- both as a concept and (in some instances) as to the sentencing ranges.

I once sent three guys in their early 20s to the federal penitentiary for over 25 years for the sale of 33 grams of crack (more or less). That was the minimum of each of their ranges. (One might have only gotten 22-23 years.) That is not proportional punishment.

S_A_M

Commuted.
 

I think I've said something like this myself here. Often the effect is to shift discretion over sentencing from the judge to the prosecutor, who can charge a lesser offense.

Quote for the Day
 

Andrew Sullivan:

• "I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," - George W. Bush on why he signed death warrants for 152 inmates as governor of Texas.
  
  The quote is from his own book, "A Charge To Keep."

Gattigap

Six Days of the Condor.
 

I wonder how Judith Miller feels.

Six Days of the Condor.
 

The kid in Georgia's ten year prison sentence for giving consensual head to his girlfriend is a much, much greater miscarriage of justice than any political yes man. Though, I assume it's not a federal charge, so Bush's newfound compassion for criminals would do him no good.

Six Days of the Condor.
 

More 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.

The change has come, she's under my thumb.
 

More Orin Kerr:

• A popular argument for why Scooter Libby should never have been prosecuted is that Patrick Fitzgerald knew early on in the investigation that Richard Armitage at the State Department was the leaker. If Fitzgerald knew Armitage was the leaker, why didn't he stop the investigation right away? Why did he continue? For some people, Fitzgerald's decision not to close up shop after learning Armitage was the leaker proves that he was an overzealous prosecutor run amok. He must have had some irrational desire to go after Libby, the argument runs, making the entire Libby prosecution unfair from the get-go.
  
  I don't find this argument persuasive. To see why, imagine yourself in Fitzgerald's shoes. Here are the relevant facts as you know them (reconstructed as best I can -- please let me know if these facts are misleading or wrong and I'll correct them). You've been appointed a special prosecutor to investigate intentional leaks to the media of the covert identity of a CIA agent. Early on in the investigation, you learn that one high-level political official has admitted that he leaked Plame's identity to one reporter; he claims that it was an accident, as he didn't realize the agent's status was covert. You also know that a lot of other reporters were leaked the same information, but you don't know who was behind those other leaks. The reporters won't talk: They insist on going to jail rather than revealing their sources.
  
  If you were Fitzgerald, would you close up shop at that point? Would you conclude without even speaking to other potential witnesses that the one high-level official was in fact responsible for all the leaks, and that he acted accidentally and entirely on his own? Or would you at least want to dig deeper to see if the story checks out?
  
  In that setting, I don't understand what was so overzealous about wanting to talk to Libby. An experienced prosecutor is going to wonder if the guy who rushes forward and claims the leaks were an accident is telling the truth. Maybe he is. But you don't want to close up shop and then read in someone's memoirs ten years from now that the official (Armitage) was the fall guy who came up with the "accident" story to cover up something -- and that he got away with it because the naive prosecutor bought the story and closed the investigation without even verifying the facts. Or maybe someone was using Armitage as an unknowing intermediary, making his story accurate from his perspective but only part of the picture. Or maybe there were other leakers -- either more leakers to the one reporter (Novak) who reported to the public about Plame, or other leakers to the other reporters. None of these are certainties, of course. But it is really so unreasonable to look into them?

ped something or other
 

someone posted a link that will count distance on a map of one's running routes. can you repost? wrong page. all you dems get back to agreeing with each other.