There is a season, spin, spin, spin

And a time for every purpose under heaven

Purposes like helping a man of conservative convictions [DCOW] stay out of jail. It only took The Corner 2 1/2 hours to pump this out, and it shows:

President Bush should pardon I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The trial that concluded in a guilty verdict on four of five counts conclusively proved only one thing: A White House aide became the target of a politicized prosecution set in motion by bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice.

Sheeeit. Fitz as Ken Starr?

Puh-leeze. If Fitz wanted to be partisan, there would have been a lot more people indicted, and the indictments would have been a lot less narrowly drawn.

So why did Fitzgerald go forward? Maybe someday he’ll tell us, but we’re not betting on it. Reasonable people can conclude that it was only Scooter Libby’s imperfect memory—not willful deception—that gave rise to the charges of lying under oath and obstruction of justice.

Oh. My. God. Reasonable people except for the jury, that is:

One juror who spoke to reporters outside court said the jury had 34 poster-size pages filled with information they distilled from the trial testimony. They discerned that Libby was told about Plame at least nine times and they didn't buy the argument that he forgot all about it.

"Even if he forgot that someone told him about Mrs. Wilson, who had told him, it seemed very unlikely he would not have remembered about Mrs. Wilson," the juror, Denis Collins, said.

I think it must be that the conservatives--true to their rigid authoritarian mindset--simply cannot accept that anyone in a leadership position--in their tribe, at least could ever be accountable for anything*.

All their golden words are spent.

* Of course, anyone in a leadership position who's not in their tribe is automagically guilty of any charge they can dream up.

UPDATE Since Scooter Libby's lawyers are appealing, the White House is still hiding behind the "can't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation" dodge. Jeebus.