Pardon me

The National Review via Think Progress. The drumbeat begins.

President Bush should pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The trial that concluded in a guilty verdict on four of five counts conclusively proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution set in motion by bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice. [...]

A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left’s fevers, the media’s scandal-mongering, and President Bush’s failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn’t have lasted beyond its opening act.

The paragraphs above are the first and the last. In between the editors of the National Review lay out a fiction that confirms, for me, that I may breathe the same air as conservatives, but I do not live in the same world.

I say the pardon will come sooner rather than later. Libby will never spend a day in jail. The only thing that could stop a pardon is if Congress chooses to investigate what Patrick Fitzgerald called "a cloud" around the Vice President and the White House. If that happens then I would not be surprised if the president throws Cheney under a bus--and a Libby pardon under it with him. The president may have a reputation for loyalty, but I'm betting his legacy and his need to scapegoat someone will prove to be more important than loyalty. He's spoiled like that.