From The Tony Snow Show today (or rather the White House Press Briefing):

Q How does the President justify this commutation when there are thousands of others in jail with a similar request?

MR. SNOW: I'm not sure that -- thousands in jail with similar requests?

Q Three thousand.

MR. SNOW: Three thousand in jail with similar -- I'm not sure that you can take anybody who has a perjury count and say that they're all the same. Every count has to be considered differently. The President, as you know, looks very carefully at these things. And furthermore, not every one of these cases comes before a President, as you're well aware. Attorneys quite often petition for these and that is one of the procedures by which they do it.

Q Can I follow on that? There are more than 3,000 current petitions for commutation -- not pardons, but commutation -- in the federal system under President Bush. Will all 3,000 of those be held to the same standard that the President applied to Scooter Libby?

MR. SNOW: I don't know.

Unless those 3,000 petitions for commutation, are former staff to the President (or Vice President), that answer would be Zip, Zilch, Nada. See.. we, us, Americans.. we're just commoners.

Another nugget I got from Keith's blog:

Then there is also the cold shower of Mr. Bush’s record as governor of Texas, during which time he rarely even read the clemency petitions of death row inmates (152 executions during his two terms as governor). About that time, Mr. Bush told his presumed ghostwriter in his autobiography A Charge to Keep “I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own.” Back to the facts: in the case of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row, he refused clemency requests from Pope John Paul the Second, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (usually strong death penalty proponents) and apparently even one of his own daughters. To the Pope, it seems he gave false reasons for why he could not grant said clemency, and to his staff, he even joked about Ms. Tucker’s pending execution. All of which raises questions of whether there was some kind of quid pro quo in the Libby case.

Don't forget Keith Olbermann's special comment tonight. Theres a preview of what he'll say tonight on his blog.. you can read it here.

Around a year ago on this day..

• Come To Mama - 2008