Are you outraged by the commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence for perjury related to the investigation surrounding Valerie Plame's outing as a CIA agent?

I'm not.

I expected it, and I expect President George W. Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney's aide eventually. It's tough to get worked up about something one so fully expected.

However, what I'm peeved about are the comparisons conservatives are drawing between Libby and former National Security Advisor under Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger -- or as Fox Noise irresponsibly supers him, Sandy Burglar.

Conservatives are saying, "Hey, why are all the Dems so upset about Libby? Don't they remember Berger?"

Anytime bad news befalls the Bush administration, Matt Drudge always posts links flashing back to bad news befalling the Clinton administration. Matt is like the annoying sibling who has to remind Mom and Dad of all your misgivings everytime he bites it.

What peeves me is that the average Joe at home doesn't understand either of these cases enough to be able to sort through the noise of sites like Drudge's or irresponsible journalism like that broadcast by Fox Noise. They're not at all alike, and President Bush's decision wasn't a mere case of executive privilege, although technically it was.

No, our president usurped his authority to please his more conservative colleagues against the will of the people and the will of a jury of Libby's peers. If Bush had done this on some personal principle or with some moral backing, the outrage wouldn't be half what it is.

Truth is, there was more outrage when Paris was sent home to serve her sentence under house arrest backed by a ton of precedent in not only local code but state law. In this case, President Bush has dictated to the judicial system who's boss.

Now, what Berger did wasn't right, but it's still not clear what he did. Long story short, he was supposed to testify before a commission, the 9/11 Commission. He borrowed some documents from the National Archives and then was accused of stealing them.

Conservatives accused Berger of stealing and destroying documents that would have made President Bill Clinton at least perceptively culpable in 9/11 to the extent that, they say, he failed to do anything about a possible al Qaeda attack.

By anybody's logic, this is a stretch, particularly coming from a crowd who regularly accused Clinton of murder.

Conservatives argued that Berger didn't put up much of a fight and that he willingly gave up his law license. What they fail to mention is that he hadn't actively practiced law in almost two decades. Besides, when does a lack of a willingness to put up a fight mean much of anything. I mean, O.J. put up one hell of a fight.

On the other hand, a jury of Lewis Libby's peers convicted him unanimously on four of five counts of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury related to an act that actually put the United States at a security risk -- outing a CIA agent. He allegedly did so in an interview with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and then got into big legal trouble when he deceived authorities as to how he learned Valerie Plame was a CIA agent.

So, conservatives argue that Berger's a bad guy for doing bad to keep his former boss from looking bad, when there's not a ton of evidence that he really did much of anything and when he was tried and convicted by President Clinton's enemies -- and somehow that's worse than a sitting White House official deceiving the judicial system about an offense that, if twisted just right, could be considered treasonous.

The reason people are annoyed about this first and foremost is because President Bush had and has always been known for being blindly loyal even in the face of the right thing to do. It offers the impression to most of us that our president is not interested in the right thing to do so much as he is protecting his friends at any cost.

Of course, if Libby's conviction hadn't been so swift, if his sentence hadn't been so basic (30 months), one could argue that Bush's loyalty in the face of a truly excessive sentence was virtuous just as any act of true friendship is virtuous.

Sandy Berger's sentence was not commuted by Bill Clinton. Berger was not pardoned by Bill Clinton, and in fact, Berger was never accused of any wrongdoing while in office. The idea that conservatives could compare the Libby situation to Berger is bogus at the core, even if Berger's actions were as devious and wrongful as conservatives claim.

Where I have a big problem with the decision to commute Scooter Libby's sentence is that our commander in chief had the audacity to say, "Here's what I think about the rule of law."

And, then, conservative talk radio and the far-right positioned this nonsense as acceptable given the Berger situation of 2003-05, and there's not a yoga instructor in the world who could perform that stretch.