Contentions:

Now, unlike in the 1990’s, we are at war. We do not yet know what the price tag will be for the Libby distraction, just as we do not know if his conviction will be tossed out on appeal or result in a presidential pardon. But in its broadest ramifications, the case, which arose out of an internecine dispute about the quality of foreign intelligence, augurs ill for any President’s ability to gather and evaluate the intelligence provided by subordinate agencies like the CIA, to formulate foreign policy, to defend what it has formulated from bureaucratic warfare waged by such subordinate agencies, and to keep our country secure.

Dean Barnett:

Many on the right are already arguing for Scooter Libby’s pardon. The Wall Street Journal argues that a pardon is necessary to trump the ongoing “criminalization of politics.” My friend John Podhoretz argues more to the point that “if Bush fails to pardon Libby, he will implicitly be accepting the contention that Scooter Libby was part of a White House conspiracy at the highest levels to destroy the career of a CIA agent whose husband had proved Bush & Co. had lied us into the Iraq War.”

As J-Pod suggests, Patrick Fitzgerald sought a symbolic victory in court. He got it. But the life he ruined was real.

That doesn’t feel like justice to me.