In the world of 21st century America where long-held principles are long held until for political reasons they need to be thrown away ASAP, this should not come as much of a surprise:

According to the New York Times, President George Bush’s arguments in favor of commuting Scooter Libby’s prison sentence contradict the arguments of his own Justice Department.

And lawyers across the country are rubbing their hands with glee, since they will start using some of the same arguments to try and get their own clients off:

In commuting I. Lewis Libby Jr.’s 30-month prison sentence on Monday, President Bush drew on the same array of arguments about the federal sentencing system often made by defense lawyers — and routinely and strenuously opposed by his own Justice Department.

But, then, the other cases didn’t involve a White House aide who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney. MORE:

Critics of the system have a long list of complaints. Sentences, they say, are too harsh. Judges are allowed to take account of facts not proven to the jury. The defendant’s positive contributions are ignored, as is the collateral damage that imprisonment causes the families involved.

On Monday, Mr. Bush made use of every element of that critique in a detailed statement setting out his reasons for commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence — handing an unexpected gift to defense lawyers around the country, who scrambled to make use of the president’s arguments in their own cases.

Given the administration’s tough stand on sentencing, the president’s arguments left experts in sentencing law scratching their heads.

“The Bush administration, in some sense following the leads of three previous administrations, 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.

Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Bush’s decision to grant a commutation rather than an outright pardon has started a national conversation about sentencing generally.

“By saying that the sentence was excessive, I wonder if he understood the ramifications of saying that,” said Ellen S. Podgor, who teaches criminal law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla. “This is opening up a can of worms about federal sentencing.”

And now, the Times reports, the Libby clemency is going to be used by many lawyers as a legal basis to seek to get their clients off the hook for the same reasons.

Note this quote from Alabama lawyer Susan James, who represents former governor Don E. Siegelman in appealing a sentence he received for 88 months for obstruction of justice and other offenses:

“It’s far more important than if he’d just pardoned Libby,” Ms. James said, as forgiving a given offense as an act of executive grace would have had only political repercussions. “What you’re going to see is people like me quoting President Bush in every pleading that comes across every federal judge’s desk.”

The key question becomes: if the Bush stance contradicted the Bush Justice Department, then presumably it would contradict the stance of many Republican lawyers and Republicans in general. If this was truly a legal matter — and not a political move — Republicans would be coming out in droves and denouncing Bush’s argument.

But what is happening is that the Bush move is accepted due to the political “sports team” mentality where whatever your team does you defend and accept, and whatever the other side wants or does you oppose. You do what you can to advance the ball — and in this case the clamor to advance the ball by negating Libby’s sentence came from his party’s conservative base.

By that logic, anything that removes an issue from Bush’s opponents is a master stroke. All’s fair in love, war, and retaining power.

Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Salon, puts the issue within the context of the 4th of July:

The pardon is the one monarchical power that the framers of the Constitution assigned the presidency. But they placed one restriction, that it could not be exercised for impeachment. In other words, the president could not use his power to pardon himself. Bush is entirely within his narrow right to use the pardon power in the Libby case. But it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the law governing that power because it is a consummate gesture of self-exoneration, at least if the vice president is an “entity within the executive branch.” Bush rewards Libby’s cover-up, thwarting the investigation into Cheney’s and perhaps his culpability. Bush’s commutation is the successful culmination of the obstruction of justice.

Since 1776, on every July Fourth, the Declaration of Independence has been posted in public places, published in newspapers and read aloud. Its bill of particulars contains these two passages defining royal tyranny and justifying revolution:

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. … For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.

Happy Fourth.

Indeed…