Pardon Me

I want Bush to pardon Libby.

I want every Republican candidate running for President and Congress to be forced to applaud Libby's pardon and to inscribe their names alongside Scooter's other distinguished defenders, from Rumsfeld to Bolton.

I want American history to possess forever a crystalline illustration of Cheney's whack-ball theory of the unitary executive exempt from the rule of law.

I want the persistent presidential nullification of the Constitution to be perpetually exemplified by an unambiguous act of unmistakable arrogance.

I want Scooter Libby's fate to be be ironically and irrevocably linked to Paris Hilton.

I want Alberto Gonzales and Orrin Hatch to have their credibility fatally and eternally compromised by their fealty to an Administration which equates savage loyalty with justice.

I want every wingnut in the blogosphere to be forced to undermine their own credibility from here to eternity by endlessly recycling their lies about Valerie Plame not being covert, and by contending -- falsley, relentlessly and deliciously self-destructively -- that a pardon does not presume guilt.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see him do time. But even more than that, I'd love a Bush pardon to provide an incontestable X-ray of this crowd's sclerotic soul.