Scooter Libby Has Paid His Debt To Society
Here it is, Scooter Libby's receipt from the courthouse -- evidence that his lawyers cut a quarter-million-dollar check (plus $400 for some fee) from his legal defense fund and had a courier drop it off. THE SYSTEM WORKS, PEOPLE.
The White House has argued that the whole actually-serve-your-prison-sentence thing was really excessive and that Libby would still face the terrible hardship of not being able to practice law for a little while, plus the terrible shame of being a convicted felon for a little while, and the super-terrible hardship of Fred Thompson withdrawing $250,000 from the multi-million-dollar Scooter Libby fund.
So, the fine is paid and that's that. Nobody in the Bush Administration has ever even heard the word "shame" before, so that's all fine. And Bush will give Irve Lewis a full pardon in January 2009 or maybe next week, allowing Scooter to return to lucrative legal work such as getting a presidential pardon for Marc Rich and selling Northrop Grumman's $100-billion space-war planes to the Pentagon.
In the meantime, Scooter plans to return to work at the Project for the New American Century , where he'll devise preliminary plans for the next seven 9/11s.
Libby Pays the Man [The Smoking Gun]