Hooray for Dick Cheney. I’ve been meaning to blog on this since the former Veep’s CNN appearance on Sunday. Like the stand-up man he is, Cheney backed his former aide Scooter Libby to the hilt when asked whether Libby should have been pardoned by G.W. Bush. Note that Cheney didn’t just say that Libby was a good public service, blah, blah, blah, as if good service excuses a crime. Instead, Cheney flat-out said what I’ve been saying, which is that Libby wasn’t guilt at all.

“I think he’s an innocent man who deserves a pardon,” Cheney said. “I believe firmly that Scooter was unjustlya ccused and prosecuted and deserved a pardon…. We, in effect, left Scooter sort of hanging in the wind, which i didn’t think was appropriate.”

Bingo.

It should and will be a mark of shame on the already tarnished record of G.W. Bush that he refused to pardon an innocent man who was targeted for the sin of being a member of Bush’s own administration. If Libby had been part of Bush’s inner circle, you bleeping well know that Bush would have pardoned him. But because he was a Cheney guy rather than directly a Bush guy, the president let him rot. And that always has been the mantra of the Bush family: Extreme loyalty to family hangers-on and sycophants, no matter how unqualified, but no regard whatsoever to those who aren’t in the inner circle. Fred Barnes wrote about this when the elder Bush took over from Reagan, noting that there was a clear hierarchy as to who would get which jobs: First priority would go to those who were with Bush way back in 1980, eight years earlier, as if the entire Reagan presidency had not occurred. I.e., a Bushie in 1980 with no serious distinguishing service in between would outrank a Reagan guy who had served well for eight years — as if Bush didn’t owe his entire presidency to the Gipper. Same thing here: People like Michael Brown and Al Gonzales and Harriet Miers and Scott McClellan get kept well beyond their useful shelf-life, while good people like Scooter Libby are thrown to the wolves.

It makes me sick. No more Bushes.