30 months for Libby

Time Magazine cries for Scooter.

When I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced Tuesday to a surprisingly long term of 30 months in prison for perjury and obstruction of justice, he became a victim of one of the most troubling aspects of federal sentencing laws — allowing harsher sentences for a crime that was never actually proven.

Huh?

The leak was the key issue for most Americans, the crux of an apparent White House campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, who wrote a 2003 op-ed piece debunking WMD justifications for the Iraq war. But while outing a CIA agent can be illegal, neither Libby nor anyone else was actually charged with doing that to Plame. In fact, pre-trial maneuvering found the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, insisting that this was not a case about a leak and fighting defense requests for documents about whether Plame was ever a covert agent, a status that could have made intentionally leaking her identity a crime.

No, this was a case about lying to FBI agents and a Federal Grand Jury under oath and obstructing justice, Reynolds Holding admits, in an effort to discredit a critic. Please.

Also at Time, Ana Marie Cox also spills salty tears for this selfless civil servant.

Walton said that the severity of the sentence stemmed from his feeling that to not hold public officials *more* accountable would cause people to feel "government does not work for them" and "cause them to lose faith in the government."

As it stands, the one person today who knows the government does not work for him is Scooter Libby.

Again, let's remember what a jury of his peers decided.

The judge sentenced Libby three months after a federal jury found Cheney's one-time top aide guilty of four felonies for failing to tell the truth to a federal grand jury and the FBI about the disclosure of former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Libby was convicted of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements to FBI agents, and one count of obstructing justice. He was acquitted of a fifth count.

It also doesn't seem likely that Judge Walton is going to find much "appealable," which might incline him more to let Libby go free pending appeal.

Which would mean that this steaming plate of Republican Red Meat -- a "Scooter" pardon -- is going to end up on preznit's desk. All because Cheney took umbrage at being called "liar" by Joe Wilson.

Now that's justice.