Limbaugh, Libby and Late-Term Pardons

In today's broadcast of the Rush Limbaugh program (transcript here), a caller mentioned the possibility of a presidential pardon for the two border patrol agents that I have listed in my "pardon watch list" (found here). Limbaugh's response was as follows:

Look, I'm as conflicted by it as you are. Bottom line is I don't have an explanation for you, but you're not going to get me to defend the president on this. I'm with you. Some of this stuff is repugnant. I think what happened to Scooter Libby is repugnant ... If [Bush is] going to do something about it, Alan, the timing for it will be at the end of the year or the end of his term when it comes time for the usual presidential pardons. The Scooter Libby thing was really, really rare, because of the timing. But all he did was commute the sentence; he didn't get rid of the conviction. He may do that later in a pardon.

Although the discussion was not particularly detailed, Limbaugh, with that comment, may be the first individual in the national news media to suggest that the end of the term is, in fact, where we should expect more pardons. The more typical routine is to simply act amazed and scream while running around and looking for "unprecedented" behavior (see additional commentary here). All of history suggests there is just no reason to do it that way, but that is the way that things are usually done.