Please pardon my criticism

Hey, what is going on here?

Lots of very loud Republicans want to build more and more prisons and lock up more and more (often very poor) people instead of taking some of the billions of dollars going down the toilet in Iraq and using them to pay for rehabilitation alternatives to prison. (Some of them are even getting their wish to imprison undocumented men, women and children for the crime of trying to survive by picking the nation's fruits and vegetables and washing the nation's dishes.)

But hark, what is that other Republican sound wafting through Washington and the offices of the national media? My goodness gracious, it's a call for Bush to immediately pardon Lewis Libby.

Yep, Libby, number one aide to Dick Cheney, the primary mover (yes, I'd say even more than Bush) of the Iraq war and occupation and the lies and manipulations behind them. The same very intelligent Libby claimed that he could not remember what eight other people - including the highly respected Tim Russert - remembered about the Valerie Plame leak.

Sure, Cheney and Rove and Armitage should have been prosecuted too. But Libby committed perjury, bad enough in a small town courthouse but one very high crime when it is committed by someone in as high a place as Libby's. If he's sorry, I say forgive him. But a presidential pardon would be a mockery, plain and simple. It is just too bad they can't send Libby and the whole Cheney gang to a good rehab center. They could spend their days studying the Constitution and international law.