TO TRULY UNDERSTAND the Plame-Libby Affair, turn off the TV and the talk radio.

Let's cut through the clutter.

First and foremost, the President has every right to commute a sentence. He also has every right to pardon Libby in January, 2009. That's the Constitution. Don't like it? Find a parliamentary government.

Second, Mr. Bush commuted the sentence of a convicted felon because he worked in his office and most likely Libby took the fall for the Administration's over-reaching in Iraq. Mr. Bush's loyalty is unflinching. He also seems willing to pay any political consequences.

But where Mr. Bush gets into murky territory is when he says Libby's sentence was too harsh. The truth is this: the sentence was carried out under federal guidelines by a Bush-appointed judge. The President also had the choice of reducing the sentence.

Third, Scooter Libby outed an undercover CIA operative—possibly undermining our intelligence community and endangering Plame and others. However, extremist conservatives will deny this. First, they'll say she wasn't undercover; but testimony by Plame's bosses confirms she was. The extremists will say that Libby never revealed her name; but court testimony shows that Libby told New York Times Reporter Judith Miller about Plame's real identity two weeks before Bob Novak reported it from his source Richard Armitage.

Fourth, Joe Wilson was right. There was no yellow cake uranium going from Niger to Iraq. But extremist conservatives will change the subject by saying that Joe Wilson lied when he said he was sent by the Vice President's office to investigate Saddam's phony purchase. However, in Wilson's book, he says he was sent by the CIA to gather information to either confirm or refute the Vice President's claim.

Now if Wilson said he was sent by the Vice President's office during a TV interview, then he needs to address that. So far, I have seen no video of such an occurrence.

The rest is all politics. Democratic candidates think they have a campaign issue. Republicans are happy to take a few hits now and hope it will maybe go away before November, 2008.

To help people forget, the GOP delivered their talking points to talk radio yakkers. I got my laughs listening to Sirius Patriot Radio today. This is Sirius' conservative talk channel. They should consider calling it Half-Truth Radio.

The majority of the conversation, if you can call it conversation, was childish. Some of you may have heard something like this: "Senator Clinton, if that's the way you want to see this and not see what your husband did…" But what I heard was: "Billy did it first. How come he never gets punished?"

In short, the extremist hosts and their half-wit listeners were primarily saying Democrats had no right to criticize Mr. Bush's decision on Libby because of Clinton's Monica scandal. So, let's see. If we have a Democratic President in the White House who decides on military action, the Republicans are not allowed to voice their concerns because they screwed the pooch in Iraq? Somehow I don't think GOP elected officials will live by that either.

What's really going through the vacuous minds of the conservative extremists is this. They're not proud of Mr. Bush; they're just more frightened of seeing Bill thumbing his nose at them from the Lincoln Bedroom in January, 2009. And Republicans would rather have a law-breaker go free than let Bubba near the Oval Office.

The truth is: both sides are hypocrites and opportunists who don't understand what they say and do today contradicts what they said and did a few years ago.

The two early hypocrites were Fred Thompson and Hillary Clinton.

Thompson agreed with the commutation. But Thompson also voted to impeach Bill Clinton. So, lying about a blow job is worse than lying about sending people to war and some of them to their deaths? What happened to law and order? (And I don't mean the TV show.) Libby was convicted by a jury with a Bush-appointed prosecutor and a Bush-appointed judge.

Hillary Clinton says the favoritism to Libby "sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice." But Senator, your husband pardoned Mark Rich thanks to his wife's generous donations; he also pardoned convicted Puerto Rican terrorists. Senator Clinton, take a pot-shot at your husband first, then maybe we'll believe you.

The truth is this. Every president has pissed off someone with pardon or commutation.

However, I side with the Administration's critics more. Sure, Clinton screwed up. (Or was he standing up?) But that's old news. Today's news is that George W. Bush didn't live up to his own ideals.