“The Bush administration... has repeatedly supported a federal sentencing system that is distinctly disrespectful of the very arguments that Bush has put forward in cutting Libby a break,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who writes the blog Sentencing Law and Policy.

The Libby clemency will be the basis for many legal arguments, said Susan James, an Alabama lawyer... “What you’re going to see is people like me quoting President Bush in every pleading that comes across every federal judge’s desk.”

Similarly, in a case decided two weeks ago by the United States Supreme Court and widely discussed by legal specialists in light of the Libby case, the Justice Department persuaded the court to affirm the 33-month sentence of a defendant whose case closely resembled that against Mr. Libby.

Read the article. The last line in it is, I think, the most important.

Whether the pardon was right or wrong is irrelevent. Whether or not the prosecution was politically motivated is irrelevent. Whether or not Libby is truely guilty is irrelevent. Whats important is that this decision runs against the grain of everything the Republican party claims to stand for.