Why are they so upset about Libby?

The Huffington Post is buzzing. Keith Olbermann is calling for Bush's resignation. Why? Because he commuted the unusually harsh sentence given to Scooter Libby. Why so much anger?

By the standards used to excuse Clinton (everybody lies), Libby didn't do anything. Even the special prosecutor on the case admitted that no crime had been committed but he still charged Libby with having obstructed the investigation of the non-crime.

Again, why does this upset the left so much?

The left seems to be suffering from a combination of collective amnesia and an extra case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The facts of the case - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Husein was trying to buy yellow cake (unprocessed uranium) to restart his nuclear program. Months later Wilson wrote a column for the New York Times saying that he had been sent by the Vice President, that he found the reports were false, and that he immediately knew that a separate report was a forgery. This ignited a firestorm. Along the way, it slipped out that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Wilson cried foul - his wife was classified undercover and exposing her identity was a crime. Wilson went on to write a best-seller claiming that the Bush administration deliberately exposed her identity in order to put her life at risk and as a warning to others.

This is all that the left remembers. What they have forgotten is that Wilson later admitted under oath that his report indicated that he had been sent at his wife's suggestion, that Iraq was inquiring about yellow cake, and that he had never even seen the report he claimed was a forgery. It also eventually turned out that the leak came from a Bush critic in the State Department, not from the White House.

What is more, since the whole thing involves Iraq and WMDs, the left sees this as the thin edge of the wedge that will pry open the secrets about the run-up to the war.

During the investigation they were convinced that the leak must have come from Cheney or Karl Rove. They were in ecstasy over Easter weekend, 2006 when it was rumored that either Cheney or Rove was about to be arrested. The left-wing bloggers couldn't wait for one of these men to be frog-marched out of the White House.

Of course it didn't happen. The investigation ended. No charges were filed except against Libby for giving conflicting dates.

But the left wants blood. Someone has to go to jail to satisfy them. Plus some of them are under the impression that an investigation is still going on and that Libby will cut a deal if he has to serve jail time.

Yesterday Olbermann went on about Libby's victim (how can there be a victim if there was no crime?). Today he went further:

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

Again - Libby was convicted of knowingly giving the wrong dates for when he first found out what Wilson's wife did for a living and in a very unusual move, was told that his jail sentence would not be suspended while he appealed. This hardly counts as a "cooked book" or a "wild-eyed partisan". But Olbermann's rants raise the ratings so NBC encourages him.

Then there is Hillary. When asked about the pardon she insisted that it was much worse than the 140 that her husband made in his last days in office. These were unrepentant felons and at least one got on the pardon list by making a substantial donation to the Clinton Presidential Library and two more hired Hillary's brother to defend them.

This alone should disqualify Hillary from the presidency but the left has selective outrage. They don't care what the Clinton's did, only what Bush did.

Update: I had forgotten that Clinton pardoned his own half-brother who had a drug conviction.