Friends in Low Places

The President commuted the sentence of I. "Scooter" Libby, previously convicted of perjury. By commuting Libby's sentence only months after all his talk about "accountability" in the Plame Affair, the President who did comedic impressions of a prisoner he put to death in Texas, who executed a mentally retarded prisoner, whose Attorney General has supported the unbending application of mandatory minimum sentences even for non violent criminals, has shown once again that he is a man of perilously few principles. He is a hypocrite and a fake. That is on him. We elected him twice. That's on us.

And please do not talk to me about President Clinton. The cases are very different legally and factually. (Mr. Clinton lied about a matter not related to his presidential duties in a civil lawsuit. Furthermore, he did not pardon himself or commute his on sentence.) But more to the point, when Republicans were preparing to impeach Mr. Clinton they argued that the rule of law was the rule of law regardless of how you felt about the underlying offense. A lie was a lie they said. Geese. Ganders.

And please don't tell me about the President's compassion. It seems only to extend to those people who look like him, think like him, and have done him favors. That is not compassion. It is cronyism.