Joe Biden Is Making Sense

Good for Biden for picking up on this aspect of the Libby commutation:

Today, Tony Snow said that President Bush decided to commute Scooter Libby's 30 month prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice because it was 'excessive.'

Yet, last year, the Bush administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in an attempt to uphold a lower court's ruling that a 33 month prison sentence for Victor Rita, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, was 'reasonable.'

The questions we should all be asking ourselves today are: Why is the President flip-flopping? Why does Scooter Libby get special treatment?

Incidentally, the Supreme Court upheld that sentence just a couple weeks ago, because the prison term fell "within the guidelines range." So did Scooter Libby's; in fact, it was the minimum sentence required by law.

as Team USA demonstrated, the Probation Officer ignored mandatory enhancements when it recommended 15 months to Libby. Once Walton put in the mandatory enhancements, 30 months was in fact the minimum in the range. So Libby, in fact, was sentenced to the minimum recommended sentence for his range. Second, it is not "routine" for someone to get bond pending appeal. Again, as Team Libby demonstrated, Congress has made it clear that the "routine" should be that a convicted felon go straight to prison.

(Marcy Wheeler explained this in rebutting a really dumb Tim Noah piece supporting the commutation.)

I'm going to go outside now and lie to as many FBI agents as humanly possible, because serving EVEN ONE DAY for such an offense is apparently excessive. I'm sure I can set up a legal defense fund and raise enough money to pay for the fine.

UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler going very slowly and explaining why this is obstruction of justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to the commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence? He won’t serve a day in jail.

MARCY WHEELER: It’s not surprising in the least. George Bush and Dick Cheney couldn’t afford the risk that Libby would flip on them rather than go do jail time, but it is pretty disgusting, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. What do you mean they couldn’t afford him to flip on them?

MARCY WHEELER: Well, the whole point of the obstruction of justice was that Libby was refusing to answer certain questions that really pointed right towards especially Dick Cheney, but even George Bush himself. The best example is that after reading Joe Wilson's op-ed, Vice President Cheney ordered Scooter Libby to leak something to Judy Miller. And then, following that, Scooter Libby proceeded to leak Valerie Plame’s identity and the contents of the CIA report on Joe Wilson’s trip. Now, Scooter Libby says that he was ordered to leak the NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate, but that doesn’t make any sense, given the rest of his story, so it seems logical and probable that Dick Cheney in fact ordered Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame's identity, but by lying, Scooter Libby has protected the Vice President from any kind of criminal implication from his actions.

AMY GOODMAN: And how does President Bush wiping out his jail time protect Bush and Cheney?

MARCY WHEELER: Well, in some ways, the commutation is actually worse than a pardon, because with a commutation, Scooter Libby still retains his Fifth Amendment privileges. So if John Conyers tomorrow called up Scooter Libby and said, “We’ve got to talk. I’d like to know exactly what happened when Dick Cheney ordered you to leak something classified to Judy Miller. I want to know whether President Bush actually did declassify it or whether Vice President Cheney was just making that up” -- he does that, and Scooter Libby just says, “I plead the Fifth,” and we still don’t get -- “we” as American citizens don’t get to understand what our president and what our vice president did to retaliate against somebody who was just exercising his First Amendment speech rights.