When legal efforts are exhausted, reformers hit the streets. Mark Schmitt notes the promising shift towards “political reform with people in it.”

Great moments in the rule of law. From today’s press briefing …

Question: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

Scott Stanzel: Well, I guess I don’t know what you mean by equal justice under the law.

Ahhhh, that really does sum it up, don’t it?

Update: More here from the briefing.

As was no doubt intended, some of the conversation and controversy over the Libby commutation (perhaps it would be more euphonious to just say the Libby get-out-of-jail-free card) was overtaken by the July 4th celebrations. So for today’s episode of TPMtv we went back and found some of the choicer moments of right-wing praise-the-lording over President Bush’s decision to save Scooter from the slammer.

My favorite moment actually comes at about 50 seconds in where CNN’s Candy Crowley explains that this was the president splitting the difference and how no one on either side was really satisfied with the decision.

I’ve been sworn to secrecy on this. But between us, among insiders it’s well known that Crowley’s on-air commentary is controlled by a subcutaneous implant which receives radio waves from a type script to brain wave conversion device located in Karl Rove’s top left hand desk drawer.

Waxman ramps up congressional scrutiny of construction of U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Domenici the latest to bail out on President Bush’s Iraq policy.

Late Update: Atrios makes a good point on this. Like Lugar, Voinovich, et al., what’s he actually going to do? This will come down to very polarized votes about forcing the president’s hand. That’s when we’ll know how serious these folks are. For my part, I was expecting his new policy idea to be that he wanted to send David Iglesias there to see if he could work things out. But apparently he didn’t propose that.

What are they actually going to do? Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to know too.

John Solomon and WaPo‘s editors mislead their readers in order to portray interview with Edwards’ hair stylist as “news.”

Giuliani spreads his campaign to more states. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

I think Tony Snow and the president need some help. Snow is out there saying that President Clinton has chutzpah for criticizing President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby.

But this really isn’t that complicated.

Setting aside whether Scooter Libby should spend 0 days in jail for what most people spend from 1 to 3 years in jail, the key here is that it’s inappropriate for the president to pardon or commute a sentence in a case in which he (i.e., the president) is a party to the same underlying crime. Because it amounts to obstruction of justice.

It’s really not that complicated.

Ahhh, I guess it was only a matter of time.

Fox News goofball Neil Cavuto explains why universal health care programs are a leading source of terrorism.

Private health care seems to be the right prescription for a secure homeland.