While you were out...

So I go away for one day to have an engagement party with the fiancee's family and mine and I come back to find that, amid all the sun stroke, Bush has commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. I suppose that I cannot say that it's shocking, Bush does not have to stand for re-election and I don't think that Cheney will ever run for elected office either so no one really has to answer for this one. It seems that clemency for friends is a characteristic behaviour for second-term lame duck presidents (Bill Clinton, I'm looking at you).

Just now: Jeffrey Toobin on CNN says that the Libby commutation sort of falls outside of the justice department guidelines and the conviction itself was hardly a Democrat hit-job as the prosecutor was a Bush appointee and the judge was a conservative Republican. Anyway, I'm tired, I'll look into this tomorrow.