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After a reporter hurled not one, but both, of his shoes at President George W. Bush, he was taken away and placed in custody. The reporter was later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, who works for an Iraqi owned television station in Egypt. Many dissenters in Iraq are calling for al-Zeidi’s release, and while it isn’t up to Bush whether or not he will be released, perhaps Bush could put in a good word.

The President said he wasn’t scared during the incident and that he remains confident and upbeat about the current conditions of Iraq and the war. Given Bush’s rosy outlook on the situation and the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in charge of throwing people in jail, maybe al-Zeidi will be granted some sort of pardon. Unlikely as it may sound, Bush has actually been fairly receptive to the idea of granting commutations of prisoners. Since 2004, Bush has commuted the jail sentences of six people, most recently in March when he commuted the jail sentence of a woman imprisoned for selling crack cocaine.

Bush’s most memorable commutation was that of I. Lewis Libby in 2006, who was famously convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury. This document contains the names, convictions and release conditions for all of President Bush’s second term commutations. Given that most of the sentence commutations were provided to people convicted of non-violent, or shoe-throwing, offenses, al-Zeidi may not be in so much luck.

Commutations by George Bush - Get more Docstoc Buzz

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