Yes, Indeed, Bush Remains a Douche

The day after, and rather than blather on my own damn self, I'm simply going to point you fine folks in the direction of people who have said it already:

• First, the news dump. The White House today refused to rule out the possibility of Duhbya giving Scooter a full pardon sometime down the road. Which begs the question of why, then, Scooter would continue to pursue an appeal? On the off chance that he wins, he could be retried, reconvicted, and resentenced - possibly after Duhbya is out of office. That's a large risk to run. The $250k fine is unlikely to come out of Scooter's own pocket, after all. In addition, the Washington Post confirmed what we all suspected last night - that on this issue, Duhbya was, indeed, The Decider, skipping routine consultation with the pardon attorney and the prosecutor involved with the case.
• As Big Tent Democrat points out over at TalkLeft, the administration is all in favor of mandatory binding Sentencing Guidelines when ex-White House weasels named "Scooter" aren't involved.
• Jeralyn, the proprietor of TalkLeft and an experienced federal criminal defense attorney, has an article on Huffington Post about the hypocrisy on display in Duhbya's pardon decision.
• At Jesus's General, the General takes a look at the kind of egregious sentencing cases that Duhbya has decided do not deserve pardons or commutations. That's a big reason why folks like me, who know how the federal criminal justice system functions, are pissed with Duhbya's decision.
• Finally, over at Volokh, Orin Kerr takes apart one of the silly GOP talking points - "we knew that Armitage was the leaker, why did Fitz need to keep investigating?" - pretty easily. He's aided by a commenter who lays out, in Fitz's own words, the reasons the investigation kept going and, eventually (thanks to Scooter), stalled.

Finally (didn't I just say that?), in the comments last night Muze set out another one of the popular GOP talking points today: "You can't compare the commuting of Libby to the pardon of Mark Rich by Clinton." When have I ever tried? Believe it or not, on criminal justice issues, Clinton was a horrible president. The Rich pardon was a disgrace, as were several others he granted under cover of night (in amongst a few legit ones). When does the statute of limitations run on the "but Clinton did it, too!" defense run, anyway?