So what if Scooter lied to cover up the White House campaign to carve up Joe Wilson? If Scooter did it, good Straussian that he is, he did it for the highest of motives in the noblest of causes.

To the neocons, Scooter is, in Ahmed Chalabi's phrase, "a hero in error," one of the boys. And as they saved him from the slammer, they will not stop until they secure him a pardon -- to which Bush has now opened the door.

The second explanation is that Vice President Cheney went to Bush, closed the door, and asked, as a personal favor, that he spare Cheney's faithful friend and loyal aide the disgrace and pain of prison. And Bush did this distasteful and shameful act at the behest of a vice president to whom he feels an immense debt.

The third explanation is that Cheney, and perhaps the president, fears that if Scooter goes to prison, and is staring at disgrace and 30 months away from friends and family, he may think he has been abandoned by people whose secrets he kept at the cost of reputation and freedom. An idle mind being the devil's workshop, Scooter might sit down and write a book, or phone "Bulldog" Fitzgerald and tell him he just remembered something.

Whatever the motives of President Bush, this was a radical not a conservative act. Whoever pressured Bush to wipe out Scooter's sentence was more a friend of Scooter than a friend of Bush. For the president has damaged his reputation as a just ruler, so Scooter could elude what other men have to face.

Will the student deferments for these fellows never end?

The act reeks of cronyism. The perception is that Scooter Libby got preferential treatment, a get-out-of-jail-free card because he was chief of staff to Cheney and assistant to Bush.

That perception is correct.

Because of whom he knew, Scooter got preferential treatment, big-time. The Godfather took care of the consigliere.

Nothing new. After all, one recalls that the attorney who rustled up a pardon for Marc Rich from Bill Clinton was also a Beltway hustler by the name of Scooter Libby. The insiders take care of their own.

And that is how the game is played in the big city.