YOU'RE A FRIEND OF BUSH - GET OUT OF JAIL FREE

The president claims Libby's 30-month sentence was and is "excessive. But he has given no reasons why he thinks that. The length of the sentence is within the federal sentencing guidelines. Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI after a jury trial in federal district court. So why does Mr. Bush think the sentence is "excessive"?

Could it be that the 30 months is really not excessive, but that Bush wants to keep Libby silent about the involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's CIA status by Bush himself and Cheney? In other words, Bush's commutation of Libby's jail time is just "hush money" to prevent Libby from implicating the president and vice president in the sordid affair of extracting retribution from Joseph Wilson for reporting that Saddam had not purchased yellowcake from Africa, as Bush falsely claimed in the run-up toward the war.

So Bush's campaign promise of making the White House a place of pride for Americans has become just another hollow campaign slogan. Because with Bush's White House, we have a president and staff that thinks nothing of violating the rule of law by demonstrating that federal sentencing guidelines apply only to the little guys who commit crimes, but do not apply to Libby and the rest of Bush's friends. The latter can do anything they want, notwithstanding any laws to the contrary, because they know that they will receive a commutation or pardon from Bush in the end.

COMPARE SCOOTER'S 30-MONTH SENTENCE WITH WELDON ANGELOS, 55 YEARS

The inequality and injustice of George Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail time is put in bold relief by recalling the case of Weldon Angelos, the 25-year old who was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison in 2004 for owning a firearm at the same time that he was dealing marijuana.

Bush thinks a sentence of 30 months is "excessive" for committing perjury, obstructing justice, and lying to federal authorities. Here's poor Weldon Angelos who is sentenced in effect for life for drug charges. Talk about lack of equal treatment under the law!

Writes Nick Madigan in The New York Times in 2004:

"In a case that has spurred intense soul-searching in legal circles, a 25-year-old convicted drug dealer, who was arrested two years ago for selling small bags of marijuana to a police informant, was sentenced on Tuesday to 55 years in prison.


"The judge who sentenced him, Paul G. Cassell of the United States District Court here, said that he pronounced the sentence ''reluctantly'' but that his hands were tied by a mandatory-minimum law that required the imposition of 55 years on Weldon H. Angelos because he had a gun during at least two of the drug transactions."

If fifty-five years is a "fair" sentence for dealing drugs under the minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines, thirty months seems like a good deal for Scooter Libby. Yet Bush says he has suffered enough.

We can all see through Bush's specious reasoning. He commutes Scooter's prison time because he and Cheney are the ones who are the real actors in having Scooter lie to authorities. And Scooter, ever the good soldier, does what he is being asked by Bush and Cheney. How could Bush allow Scooter to go to jail when Scooter did what he did to protect W and Vice?

Yet it is people like Bush and Cheney who made it a point to clamor for increase prison sentences, especially for little people like Angelos, whom they consign to to some prison cell for the rest of his life for drug possession.

Certainly perjury and obstruction of justice are worse crimes than drug possession if only because they are more intentional, more deliberate, more filled with what lawyers call a mens rea, a guilty mind.

Of course, Angelos' sentence is ridiculous for its excessiveness, and made even more so now by the president of the United States calling a sentence of only 30 months "excessive."