Scooter Libby sentenced to 36 months in prison

Patrick Fitzgerald's latest victim, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison this morning in Washington. He was also fined $250,000.

The pressure on President Bush pardon Libby, already being felt, will be turned up several notches.

After the Clinton "Pardongate" fiasco in 2001, Bush resolved to take a tougher stance on presidential pardon. My guess is the president will pardon Libby in a few months, probably before a holiday weekend when the news cycle is slow. He won't pardon on Libby on Christmas Eve--as his father did with Caspar Weinberger in 1989--his critics will revel over the irony, but New Year's Eve is another possibility.

Fitzgerald is back in Chicago, and hard at work uncovering graft in Illinois, as well as prosecuting the Conrad Black case. And we have a chief executive here, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, living in the new governor's mansion on Chicago's Northwest Side who is very nervous because of "Fitzmas'" interest in state government.

Three of the last five governors of Illinois have been convicted of crimes. To be fair, Democrat Dan Walker went to prison because of illegalities committed after he was governor--although he was an awful chief executive. Parsing in another other direction, one could say four out of the last six Illinois govs have moved onto federal prison--I'm leaving out Sam Shapiro, who was governor for eight months, succeeding Democrat Otto Kerner. Of course, Kerner went to prison too.

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