The New York Sun editorializes on the editorial in the New York Times denouncing the President’s commuting the prison sentence of I. Lewis Libby.
Excerpts:
The New York Times waited just hours after President Bush commuted the sentence of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., before issuing an editorial condemning the president’s decision. It puts the paper in the position of favoring a judge’s decision to impose a 30-month prison sentence on a person whose main crime, if there was one, stems from his effort to protect his ability to serve as a source for a New York Times reporter. Does the New York Times think its readers have forgotten the tenacious legal and public relations battle the paper fought to prevent the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, from wringing from its reporter Libby’s name?
...had the Times and its lawyers succeeded in their legal and public relations quest to prevent their reporter from having to testify in the case, the consequence would have been the same — Scooter Libby would have been an unconvicted man. Somehow, when President Bush makes that happen, the Times deems it worthy of contempt. If it had happened as a result of the maneuverings of the Times’ first amendment lawyers, they’d no doubt be celebrating over on West 43rd Street.
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