4,000 to 3

Those are the odds for commutation requests with this usually mercy-free president:

As president, Mr. Bush has commuted three sentences in addition to Mr. Libby’s and denied more than 4,000 requests, said Margaret Colgate Love, the pardon lawyer at the Justice Department for most of the 1990s. He has also issued 113 pardons and denied more than 1,000 requests. "His grant rate is very low compared to other presidents'," she said.

Now recall that Libby's lawyers had not even formally requested a commutation. The discrepancy is so marked it begs explanation. This really says it all:

"The grounds he offered for commuting Libby’s sentence were equity that the sentence was out of line with other sentences or compassion," said Austin D. Sarat, [a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College and author of “Mercy on Trial,” a study of executive clemency].  Sarat said. "Those two grounds seem so out of character with anything Bush had ever said or done in the area of clemency that it’s as if he has become a different person."

He didn't become a different person, because the reason he gave was a transparent fiction. This legal proceeding was rigged from the beginning to save Libby any consequences for perjury. It was rigged to ensure that this president's lackeys never get held responsible for anything. And that's something that's been consistent with Bush for ever.