I guess it’s time to start warming up the old pardon signing machine.
Rove's defense team asserts that President Bush's deputy chief of staff has not committed a crime but nevertheless anticipates that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald could find a way to bring charges in the next two weeks, the source said
I don't really think there's any way that the Coward in Chief would let his brain go wifting away in the long arms of the law when his family has a tradition of pardoning everyone who might possibly turn coat and help the law nail a family member, so I expect that as soon as the charges are filed a presidential pardon will materialize, as if by magic, out of the clear blue sky.
What I waiting for is to see how the B*sh junta will try to spin those pardons, given that they aren't the traditional presidential pardon party done right as the retiring president bolts for the last bus to Union Station on the 19th of January. The "We're the pro-treason party!" approach might not work too well, given that there are a lot of Evil Party loyalists who happen to work for parts of the government where being betrayed to the enemy might be personally dangerous instead of "merely" screwing over your hand-recruited collaborators and counterspies. (There are some branches of the government, like, oh, the National Guard, the Army and every other branch of the US military that's had soldiers dropped into the Splendid Little War™ in Iraq, where the argument could be made that this has already happened, but that's a polite discussion for another time.)
(link via Kevin Drum)