Report: "Bush was right ..."

The JFA institute, a Washington criminal justice group consisting of criminal justice scholars from eight universities has issued a new report which says President Bush was "right" to commute a portion of Scooter Libby's sentence as it was "too excessive." Barack Obama's promise to end the "era of Scooter Libby justice" is none the better. The report appears to contain no commentary on the wisdom of Bill Clinton's pardon of his own half-brother, or the fugitive Marc Rich.

The institute, funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and financier George Soros's Open Society Institute, does complain that Bush:

should have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of Americans who each year have also received prison sentences for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to our society.

Why this responsibility has fallen to President Bush, as opposed to any of ten other presidents is unknown and quite the mystery. One also wonders if the "institute" will be around in 2008 to greet the new administration with this mandate. "Hundreds of thousands" of pardons would, incidentally, be "unprecedented." I see no mention of Barry Bonds in the report. But give it time.