Though wild-eyed and hysterical, President George W. Bush’s critics seemed most pleased that he had given an excuse for another scolding by commuting the prison sentence of  Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Apparently some critics didn’t even bother to do Bush or Libby the courtesy of reading the president’s “Grant of Executive Clemency” or his accompanying statement before firing their blunderbusses, mistakenly calling it a “pardon.” It was not a pardon, but a commutation.

Libby remains convicted; the president’s decision does not vacate the conviction for lying under oath. He doesn’t have to do 30 months in prison, an arguably excessive penalty, although it is important to note that, as Bush did in the grant: “The district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.”

Libby still must pay a $250,000 fine, be subject to two years of probation and suffer such further penalties as the right to practice law and the loss of reputation.

Maybe it’s too obvious to point out that former President Bill Clinton got off scot-free for committing the same crime. This is something that Bush’s critics seem to have forgotten, just as conservatives seem to have forgotten how they, with equal passion, tried to get him thrown out of office. Still, Bush haters also have forgotten how Clinton granted a bunch of pardons and commutations during his last days in office to friends, campaign contributors and his half-brother. Among them was A. Glenn Braswell, pardoned for mail fraud and perjury convictions while federal investigators still were examining additional money laundering and tax evasion charges. Braswell and Carlos A. Vignali, whose sentence for cocaine trafficking Clinton commuted after serving less than half of his 15-year sentence, each had paid about $200,000 to Hillary Clinton’s brother, Hugh Rodham, to press their clemency cases.

You’ll recall that this whole Libby prosecution began because someone leaked the name of Valerie Plame as the CIA agent who urged her bosses in her official capacity to send her husband—the ever anti-Bush partisan Joseph Wilson—to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was attempting to obtain nuclear weapons. Wilson’s “investigation” was shoddy and, it turned out, Libby wasn’t the leaker after all. But Wilson, unable to be embarrassed by his own incompetence and rhetoric, sprang into action immediately upon learning of Libby’s commutation. He told CNN that Bush “is bending to a neoconservative sect” and called Libby a traitor—not exactly what he was convicted of. Wilson called for a congressional investigation and, no doubt, by now, Democratic committee chairmen are fighting each other for the honors.

Wilson was not to be outdone in overheated rhetoric by Democratic presidential aspirants. Hilary Clinton, ignoring or not getting the irony, railed: “This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice. (Why can’t political flacks ever come up with something more refreshing than the bromide, “sends a clear signal?”) Barack Obama said that Bush had “placed himself above the law.” Sen. Joe Bidden (D-Del.) huffed: “I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls…expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard of the law. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), not a presidential candidate (thank the Lord) but always to be counted on to same something stupid or deceptive, saw Bush throwing the justice system out of kilter because, get this, “Even Paris Hilton had to go to jail.”

Point is, presidents are endowed by the Constitution with pardon and clemency powers and most, if not all, presidents of both parties have used them. It is the same kind of discretion that a prosecutor has in deciding what charges to file against a defendant, or whether to file any charges at all. It is the same kind of discretion that judges have in some criminal cases to impose lighter or heavier sentences. To say that Bush offended the spirit of the law—and this could be a legitimate criticism—is a lot different and more dishonest in saying that he acted against or above the law.

Of course, some pardons and commutations have been granted for political reasons, and the president’s rivals will predictably regard them as precursors to the end of civilization. (No reason, per their script, to acknowledge even the slightest possibility acted in he believed he was acting justly.) Predictably, the Washington crowd and the media have treated the Bush action as just more proof of his “abuse of power.”

But they will compound the “travesty” with their own exaggerations and demagoguery. The rest of America, safe to say, will continue with our lives.

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago Tribune columnist and freelance writer

Have PoliticalMavens.com delivered to your inbox in a daily digest by clicking here