Quote:

Matter-eater Man said:
Don't worry I'm sure Libby will get a pardon...



SCOOTER JUROR: GIVE POOR GUY A PARDON

    One of the jurors who convicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby now wants President Bush to pardon him.

    "I don't want him to go to jail," Ann Redington, said.

    Redington told MSNBC's "Hardball" yesterday that jurors had to convict Libby based on the evidence - but said she cried when their guilty verdicts were read Tuesday.

    Asked if she favored a pardon, she said, "Yeah. It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed."

    "I would like him to get" a pardon, she added.

    "I didn't want to see him and his wife and say he was guilty of a crime," she said.

    Government prosecutors led by Patrick Fitzgerald spent nearly four years investigating the case, but never charged anyone with the leak that identified Valerie Plame, wife of an Iraq war critic, as a CIA operative.

    Another juror, Denis Collins, said on ABC's "Good Morning America," "There was a frustration that we were trying someone for telling a lie apparently about an event that never became important enough to file charges anywhere else."

    Libby's lawyers are likely to seek a new trial by arguing that judge Reggie Walton made several rulings they consider unfair.

    For instance, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was allowed to show jurors newspaper articles that defense lawyers considered inaccurate and inflammatory.

    Also, defense attorneys were not permitted to question NBC's Tim Russert or Andrea Mitchell about televised statements on the case they made outside of court.


Not sure I agree with a pardon at this point. There's a strong case to be made for President Bush to let the appeals process run its course before deciding whether or not to pardon Libby.


Sure, it's easy enough for conservatives to say, Bush should pardon Libby this instant, and to hell with what the liberals think. But the reality is that President Bush has very little political capital left, and what little he does have, he needs to spend fighting Democratic efforts to force him to surrender in Iraq.

However justified a pardon may be, the bottom line is that most Americans would see it as President Bush using his power to let Dick Cheney's convicted crony off the hook. The media will make sure that's the case, guaranteed.