Or, to put it another way, if the House issues a Bill of Impeachment in December, 2008, does that render ineffective any pardons of the staff in January, 2009 ? I would argue that it does; an excellent reason to go for impeachment IMHO.

Folks, this is exactly why it’s important who we elect as President, contrary to what many Naderites said in 2000.

Frank Rich: EVEN by Washington’s standards, few debates have been more fatuous or wasted more energy than the frenzied speculation over whether President Bush will or will not pardon Scooter Libby. Of course he will. A president who tries to

Outside the still small (but thankfully growing) blogosphere, noone cares or even “knows” about this except from endless in-one-ear-out-the-other noise of headline news that saturates our populace.

I guarantee I could go around my office, diverse and mostly well-educated, and save for the Legal Dept., and Public Affairs types, most people will say, “Scooter, who?” And the older ones will confuse I. Lewis Libby with G. Gordon Liddy of earlier notoriety. At best they will recognize this as one of those government scandal thingies. The power of the media to play on this, and effectively reduce it to absolute inconsequence is profound.

Thanks for the rundown, LHP. Unfortunately, as you’ve observed, our President doesn’t seem to be deterred by rules and regulations. With that in mind, is there any reason to hope that he’ll abide by them here? That’s not a rhetorical question, BTW.

The deal is to do what the Democrats are doing: At every opportunity, bring LHP’s points up in public.

Special thanks to looseheadprop (and what a fine post and discussion thread you spawned here!), to litigatormom, and to Ann in AZ.

Youse guys (and all the rest of the discussion participants here) are what make the Lake the best place to be!