For all those career criminals out there, oppressed by a legal system stacked against them, who hope against hope that the justice of their cause will some day be recognized, the President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence is a historic victory. Poor Scooter, who suffered discrimination at the hands of jurors just because he happens to belong to a minority group—a politically powerful neocon, with all kinds of friends and supporters in the higher echelons of government, academia, and the legal profession. This was clearly a case of someone who endangered the national security, exposed a vitally important covert CIA operation, and placed at least one and probably several more agents in mortal danger with the best of intentions.

Read my earliest take on the l’affaire Libby here.