Won't Need A Nickname For Prison

Scooter Libby faces sentencing today. There's liveblogging on it at Firedoglake. Patrick Fitzgerald apparently said "We're not going to recommend any sentence. I do think the sentence has to make clear and loud that truth matters and one's station in life does not."

Reading around, the legal consensus seems to be that he'll get a year or two. Of course, don't be surprised if it's nada; rich people still get a favorable hand from the long arm of the law.

He won't go to jail immediately, as there will be an appeal... unless the judge decides he has to be jailed pending the appeal.

UPDATE: The Smoking Gun has secured all the letters written by character witnesses asking for leniency in the Libby case. Now here's some character: Don Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Mary Matalin and James Carville (!), Richard Myers (former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Richard Perle, James Woolsey (ex-CIA director), Douglas Feith, Chris Cox (SEC Chairman) and Nixon's old lawyer Leonard Garment.

With friends like those...

UPDATE II: This is from the Matalin-Carville letter:

I have seen what this trial has done to my own kids, just reading about it.

Usually legal arguments and amicus curaie briefs are must-reading for children. What a bunch of tripe.