This seems pretty basic, but if someone gets charged with obstruction of justice and perjury and it later turns out that we discover that there was no “underlying crime” (as some put it in their Clintonian burbling), the justice-obstructing perjuror does not get some sort of “do-over.”  “Oh, see, I couldn’t have lied to the grand jury, because I had nothing to lie about–some other guy said so.”  That’s a bizarre claim to make, especially when it can be demonstrated that this person did lie to the grand jury.  If you think that witness oaths matter, since they are, well, rather fundamental to our entire judicial system, it is matters whether people violate them.  Was 1998 really that long ago?  Did the Goppers lose their copies of the old talking points? 

The main problem with obstructing justice, the evil that the law tries to remedy by criminalising this activity, is that it delays and hamstrings investigations unnecessarily because of a failure to cooperate with officers of the court, which may serve as a cover for far worse crimes.  It may be enabling criminals to destroy evidence that they might otherwise not have had a chance to destroy, or it may be enabling them to cook up a cover story, or it may simply be running up the costs of the investigation in an attempt to drag it out and exhaust the patience of the prosecutor.  Because the investigation has been thwarted and delayed, the prosecutor would not have been able to discover whether or not there were other crimes to investigate, because the person obstructing justice has prevented him from doing his job.  Having wasted the prosecutor’s time and prevented him from reaching the appropriate conclusions about the question of the “underlying crime,” the justice-obstructing perjurer does not get to say, “No hard feelings!”  He has shown contempt for the rule of law and has to be held accountable.  That is, by the way, what the rule of law means. 

Libby was held accountable.  That is as it should be.  If Republicans really think that having the President pardon a convicted perjuror is the right kind of image of their party that they want to present to the public, by all means push for Libby’s pardon.  Many Americans suspect that Republicans will tolerate any amount of corruption when committed by people on their side.  This is the chance to remove all doubt–don’t disappoint us by suddenly discovering ethical integrity!