His appeal was irrelevant anyhow, given that his jail sentence was commuted and will probably be pardoned anyhow at the end of Bush's term.

Speaking of which, are any of the Democrats paying attention here? Hello??? If Bush is allowed to give pardons (for which I expect there to be hundreds, if not thousands) absolving this administration and the GOP of criminal wrongdoing, this experiment in democracy is finished. Cheney and Bush need to be frog marched out of the White House if for the only reason that they are unable to grant ANY pardons whatsoever.

Didn't Libby have a massive defense fund? Where do those funds go now that there is no appeal?

Shorter Ted Wells: the pardon's in the bank, so why bother with the appeal?

Still, picking up on what David Kurtz says, it means that Dana Perino will need a new excuse to avoid talking about it.

This needs to be investigated. Get Libby in front of a committee, put him under oath, and ask if he's dropping his appeal because he's been promised a pardon. That'll get the truth out of him. Oh, wait ...

I'll go with..."knowing the time-wasting Democrats, who would rather waste time on useless investigations rather than get the country's work done, there will probably be another appeal, so we don't want to comment on it at this time."

Hell, they're playing it with "Iran might be dangerous *some day*", so why not.

The Republicans expressed such outrage of any Clinton pardons. It seems their hypocritical nature is revealed in how they view any criminal wrongdoing of the Bush administration. They investigated for the last six years of the Clinton administration, but blocked any Congressional investigations until the Democrats retook coverage. I expect some shocking revelations to come out, once the Supreme-court Bush is out of office. I think the entire Bush family should be loaded on a plane to exile in Saudi Arabia or go to prison. Seize all their money that Daddy has made off the Saudis and others in the Middle East.

danger,

There really is nothing stopping Bush from pardoning members of his own administration for their criminal wrongdoing and there never has been. The pardon power is essentially unreviewable. Just ask Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. This (and prosecutorial discretion) is why calls by the Democrats for the administration to prosecute itself are meaningless (especially now that the independent counsel statute has expired). At the moment, Bush owns every aspect of criminal prosecution and no one can force him to prosecute and no one can stop him from pardoning someone who is convicted.

However, the pardon power is not the only unreviewable power in the Constitution. Congress has the essentially unreviewable power to impeach officers of the US (just about everybody who's important) for almost any wrongdoing. I'm not saying they have to impeach Bush, but it wouldn't hurt for them to exercise this power from time to time towards some executive official.

A daring future (D-President) could possibly issue executive orders to nullify pardons, but even in such a scenario it would become apparent that the executive will have reached such a totalitarian end. You're right, anon, it wouldn't hurt for them to exercise that authority once in a while, but it's become apparent that Congress has lost all of it's intended original functions and has turned into a bill printer for the Executive. It seems that as a legislative body, all they care about are their own paychecks.

Getting ourselves out of this mess will prove to be just as treacherous as getting ourselves in the mess in the first place. I wonder if this is really the last throes of our democracy and nation.

Excuse my obtuseness, but if Libby is so unconvinced of the success of his case to clear his name, why in the world would Bush grant him a pardon? It looks to me that Libby is finally admitting his guilt.