Presidents commute sentences, bestow conditional pardons, and, occasionally, offer up full pardons when they see fit. It goes with the job, whether we, the people, like the recipients of the presidential largesse. This is a constitutionally derived power that is very simple to understand: the President of the United States of America is allowed to pardon whomever he wants, whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants.

Here’s what the constitution (Article II, Section 2) has to say about certain presidential powers:

Section 2. The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Simple, no? Which is precisely why Jesse Jackson’s call for impeachment of President Bush over his decision to commute Libby’s sentence is not only overblown, but blatantly ignorant.

”Since the president has intervened in this process, it is now the Congress’ obligation and responsibility to intervene in the executive process and begin an inquiry into these very serious crimes against the constitution of the United States,” said Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Chicago).

Jackson says this time the president went too far. After word that Bush commuted Libby’s sentence Jackson plans to call on House Democrats to start impeachment proceedings.

Certainly, it’s reasonable to critique the president on his decision and to disagree with his conclusions. But that’s a far away from calling for impeachment when the president has exercised his constitutional powers. There have been numerous proposals and attempts to limit presidential pardon powers and even to require Senate approval; all of those attempts have failed.

In his four years in office, Jimmy Carter gave some sort of clemency to 566 petitioners. Ronald Reagan, over his eight years, only took such action 406 times. Bill Clinton handed out 456 acts of clemency. And none of them were even near the top 10. Curious? See the list here.

Would you like some real fun with clemency? Consider Nixon’s conditional pardon of Jimmy Hoffa. Or Ford’s oft-questioned pardon of Nixon. As highly as I have always regarded the man, Reagan’s pardon of George Steinbrenner always struck me as wrong. While Clinton’s pardon of Mark Rich got the headlines, it was his decision to commute the sentence of the FALN terrorists that really got me going.

There is a grand history of presidential pardons, and, for all of Andrew Sullivan’s foaming at the mouth, this one is unlikely to be remembered in the same way that we remember Washington’s pardon of the Whiskey Rebellion leaders.

President Bush was well within his constitutional rights and purview. Further, by leaving much of Scooter Libby’s punishment intact (only commuting the jail time), he leaves significant judgments against Libby and angers that part of the right who insist that nothing less than a full pardon is appropriate. Sullivan, breaking out loaded terms like “the royal court” and “it’s good to be the king”, now seems to be indicating that the commuted sentence is an effort by the Bush administration to make sure that Libby stays quiet “about the war crimes of the president and vice-president”.

He’s slipping into conspiracy-theory land, isn’t he?

How about we just go with what the president has given us: he thinks that the sentence handed down was too harsh and he undertook to rectify the problem. Simple. There is nothing spectacular about this act of clemency; certainly, there is nothing either unconstitutional or out of the ordinary to be seen.