The Rule of Law Means . . .

nothing, apparently. As MSNBC.com reports:

"President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2½-year prison term that Bush said was excessive."

In pardoning Scooter, the President noted that he "respect[ed] the jury's verdict."

Nice to know that the President respected the jury's decision. Except that he clearly didn't respect the jury's decision. Rather, he showed outright disdain for the jury's decision as well as the entire system of justice on which this country is based. He played his self described role as "Decider." He determined that despite the conclusion reached by his peers over the course of a fair trial, Scooter shouldn't be punished for falling on his sword in order to protect the administration. Thus, the entire judicial process could be tossed aside.

While the sheer partisanship of this decision is enough to make me actually shake my head, there is a more important point here. It's the message that we are sending to the world. At a time that we are occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, in part, in order to impose democracy and the rule of law upon which that democracy is based, the President today has unequivocally signaled that the United States is above that very rule of law.

It is incomprehensible that some people, people who proclaim to be the greatest proponents of the rule of law, expect others around the world to adopt the rule of law when those same proponents show such a lack of respect or need for it. From the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, to the evisceration of habeus corpus, to secret wire taps, to today's decision to ignore the justice system entirely, there are too many examples that this President, this administration, does not care about the rule of law. It shouldn't be any wonder that the rule of law is having difficulty taking hold in other parts of the world - other parts of the world are just following our example.