Victoria Toensing thinks Patrick Fitzgerald should can the emotional theatrics.

It's not right for a prosecutor to express his outrage, she says:

... Justice Department guidelines [say] that prior to trial a "prosecutor shall refrain from making extrajudicial comments that pose a serious and imminent threat of heightening public condemnation of the accused." The prosecutor is permitted to "inform the public of the nature and extent" of the charges. In the vernacular of all of us who practice criminal law, that means the prosecutor may not go "beyond the four corners" -- the specific facts -- in the complaint or indictment...

Fitzgerald said what Blagojevich did "would make Lincoln roll over in his grave" and so forth. Clearly, inappropriate, according to Toensing, who seems to think Fitzgerald was emboldened by the adulation he received in the media over the way he treated Scooter Libby:

In his news conference in October 2005 announcing the indictment of Scooter Libby for obstruction of justice, he compared himself to an umpire who "gets sand thrown in his eyes." The umpire is "trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked" his view. With this statement, Mr. Fitzgerald made us all believe he could not find the person who leaked Valerie Plame's name as a CIA operative because of Mr. Libby. What we all now know is that Mr. Fitzgerald knew well before he ever started the investigation in January 2004 that Richard Armitage was the leaker and nothing Mr. Libby did or did not do threw sand in his eyes. In fact -- since there was no crime -- there was not even a game for the umpire to call.

In the Libby case, rather than suffer criticism, Mr. Fitzgerald became a media darling. And so in the Blagojevich case he returned to the microphone. Throughout the press conference about Gov. Blagojevich, Mr. Fitzgerald talked beyond the four corners of the complaint. He repeatedly characterized the conduct as "appalling." He opined that the governor "has taken us to a new low," while going on a "political corruption crime spree."

Let's get back to super-square prosecutors -- confined by the four corners.

"There you were, Mr. Elevate-Cronyism-Over-The-Rule-of-Law, sitting on a stool right behind me in that look-at-me Crayola yellow shirt..."

Maureen Dowd writes about my favorite '08 election topic: the problem of how to wring positive value out of Bill Clinton without getting any of his negative on Hillary. (TimesSelect link.)

Yes, did you see those photos of Bill and Hillary in Iowa, with him in that bright yellow shirt? We all know yellow is the color of hope, and Bill is the man from Hope, and Hillary's name begins with H but her image is not so much one of hope but of grim resignation. Obama is the candidate who embodies hope. (It's the main thing he does!) So, naturally they put a bright yellow shirt on Bill.

The end of Dowd's piece is a riff I think we'll hear her riff quite a few times: Bill will want to have trysts in the White House. How is the Hillary Clinton campaign going to try to keep people from thinking about that when they imagine Bill as the first First Gentleman? It looks like what they're doing is having him appear alongside her, acting out his role as proper husband. But, as Dowd notes, everyone is going to be scrutinizing him to see if it's genuine, and if everyone's looking at him, how will he not be too distracting?

“Sweetie,” [Hillary] says, smiling brightly. “Everything’s going really well. You abide by your five-minute limit and talk only about me. You’re still having a little trouble getting that adoring smile down. In fact, on our first stop you actually looked bored and fidgety while I was talking. But I think we solved that problem today by having you leave the stage as soon as I start speaking. If you can just refrain from looking so longingly at the microphone, our pas de deux will be perfect!”

CORRECTION: I called Bill's shirt a polo shirt. The shirt actually buttoned all the way down the front and had long sleeves. Which I recommend.

"That judicial decision was entirely political.... that was entirely improper, because judges are not allowed to act politically..."

That's how Alan Dershowitz writes about the D.C. Circuit panel that denied Libby release pending appeal. (The panel briefly noted that Libby failed to show he had a substantial issue for appeal.) Orin Kerr makes short work of Dershowitz:

I love Dershowitz's reason why the two-sentence order shows that these two very conservative judges ["Federalist Society favorite David Sentelle and solid conservative Karen LeCraft Henderson"] (together with Judge Tatel) acted out of partisan political animosity against Bush: Libby's arguments were so strong that it's the only explanation. Of course.

"The farce is over. It has no significance."

David Brooks recounts Plamegate. (TimesSelect link.) He calls Joe Wilson
a strutting little peacock," a "charming P.T. Barnum," and "an inveterate huckster," who only got attention because of Dick Cheney's "unfailing talent for vindictive self-destruction."

Scooter Libby emerged as the least absurd character in the entire drama, and yet he was the one who committed a crime. President Bush entered the stage like a character from another world, a world in which things make sense.

His decision to commute Libby’s sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.

Bush spares Libby.

AP reports:

President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case.

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.

Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case.

MORE: From the NYT:

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison.”

Like a pardon, a commutation is a form of clemency, granted to the president by the Constitution. But a pardon is an official act of forgiveness, whereas a commutation simply reduces the penalty, without making an official judgment of forgiveness.

Mr. Bush has been urged by some conservatives to grant Mr. Libby an outright pardon.

The president noted in his statement that that the decision to commute “leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby.”

“The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged,” Mr. Bush said. “His wife and young children have suffered immensely. He will remain on probation.”

AND: Earlier in the day, there was glee from some quarters when the Court of Appeals denied Libby's motion for release pending appeal. Firedoglake:

What this says to me is that Libby — or, as I like to call him Inmate 28301-016 — is headed to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect anything.

[COMMENTS SECTION]

is the frog marching?...

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!....

Scooter Libby, convicted felon, is going to prison.

4th of July present. Barbeque and drinks all around…

The Fitz of July?

ADDED: If you want to know what I think, click the "Libby" label below. I've got nothing new to say.

Straight to prison for Libby?

The judge refused to allow him to remain free pending his appeal. What will Bush do, if he's lost the option of waiting until after the 2008 election to pardon Libby?

"These letters, once released, would be published on the Internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers."

An incredibly banal line in an argument leads to a really padded NYT story. If the judge had caved to this argument against releasing the letters written in support of Scooter Libby -- by Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. -- there might have been something worth going on about. But he didn't, so...

"I'm pretty much going to stay out of it until the course -- the case has finally run its final -- the course it's going to take."

So says President Bush, responding to inquiries about whether he will pardon Scooter Libby. I know Bush often stumbles over his words -- and that the press loves to transcribe his remarks in especially stumbly-looking form -- but reading that quote, in that form, I hear the intention to hang back and hope the legal process spares him, but, if it comes to a point where there's nothing between Libby and prison, to pardon him.

Libby probably faces a prison sentence of 1 1/2 to three years for lying about his role in the disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, wife of war critic and former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. But Libby could avoid jail time until after the 2008 presidential election through appeals, according to legal specialists -- timing that would make a pardon easier for Bush politically.

The path is so obvious. The path, the course, the case, the course...

"The time for a pardon is now."

The Wall Street Journal editorializes that Bush should pardon Libby:

In hindsight, the defense seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the "fall guy" for others in the White House. That didn't do enough to rebut Mr. Fitzgerald's theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.

Since the defense made this decision, it's hard to see why Bush would be motivated to pardon him.

We believe [Bush] some personal responsibility for this conviction, especially for not policing the disputes and insubordination in his Administration that made this travesty possible.

I really don't understand how these asserted shortcomings connect to lying to a grand jury. He was convicted of perjury. Whatever you think of the Plame affair and the whole investigation, why should Bush condone that?

Minutes after we hear that their notes make the jurors seem confused, the verdict is in.

Here's the piece about the confused-sounding notes.

In their questions, which were released Tuesday morning, jurors seemed confused about what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was alleging.

Were prosecutors saying Libby knew that Plame worked for the CIA by the time of his FBI interview, jurors asked? Was he accused of lying to Cooper? Or does the government believe Libby's account of the Cooper conversation was untrue?

Walton tried to clarify things.

"To be clear, Mr. Libby is charged in Count Three with making false statements to the FBI about what was said during his July 12, 2003 conversation with Mr. Cooper," Walton wrote in response. "Mr. Libby is not charged with making a false statement to Mr. Cooper."

The reading of the verdict is scheduled for noon, Eastern Time.

UPDATE: I'm watching the CNN Pipeline, "Awaiting Libby Verdict." We overhear the journalists chatting as they mill around off camera. One guy stays in the frame. He's got a Burberry scarf all twirled around his neck and lower face. How cold is it in D.C. anyway? Oh, good Lord, he just put on a wool hat. Hmmm... I see it's 26°. "I did it. I'm guilty. I'd do it again." I hear someone -- not the scarf guy -- say. Ooh, I guess I'm "live-blogging" as they say.

"Guilty on 4 out of 5 counts," someone says. Are they predicting or hearing? They are hearing.

"'Humanly possible' is just a nebulous term, and I don't know exactly what it means."

The judge in the Libby case refuses to answer the question the jury asked. Remember, we puzzled over the question here. I wrote:

"Is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event?"...

The question suggests that the jurors might be stumped about whether than can convict even though a juror keeps saying something like: But, of course, it's possible to forget anything. This would be an argument against convicting based on the evidence that demonstrated the importance of what Libby contends he forgot.

This question might mean that they are arguing about how high the standard of reasonable doubt really is. But there is also concern about the kind of proof that is required. Is it enough to simply show that the thing allegedly forgotten was extremely memorable, so that the jurors have to make an inference that he is therefore lying? Someone may be demanding that there should be evidence about the mechanism of forgetting.

I would think that the correct answer about the quantity and quality of the evidence needed would tend to make a jury that would ask the question that way likely to convict.

So, now I suppose I have to say that the judge's refusal to give an answer decreases the likelihood that the jury will convict. Do you agree?

"Is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event?"

So asked the jury in the Libby case, seeking a clarification from the judge about the meaning of reasonable doubt. They've been deliberating since February 22. Can anyone pick apart that question and tell what it means?

The question suggests that the jurors might be stumped about whether than can convict even though a juror keeps saying something like: But, of course, it's possible to forget anything. This would be an argument against convicting based on the evidence that demonstrated the importance of what Libby contends he forgot.

This question might mean that they are arguing about how high the standard of reasonable doubt really is. But there is also concern about the kind of proof that is required. Is it enough to simply show that the thing allegedly forgotten was extremely memorable, so that the jurors have to make an inference that he is therefore lying? Someone may be demanding that there should be evidence about the mechanism of forgetting.

I would think that the correct answer about the quantity and quality of the evidence needed would tend to make a jury that would ask the question that way likely to convict. Do you agree?

Here they are, with laptops, salami, and crackers...

It's the bloggers! They're covering the Libby trial.

All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time transcript of the testimony...

With a yeasty mix of commentary, invective and inside jokes, Fire-doglake [sic] has seen its audience grow steadily during the trial, reaching 200,000 visitors and requiring an additional computer server on its busiest days — like Tuesday, with the revelation that Mr. Cheney would not appear....

Even as they exploit the newest technologies, the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds....

In the courthouse, the old- and new-media groups have mixed warily at times. Mainstream reporters have shushed the bloggers when their sarcastic comments on the testimony drowned out the audio feed.

I haven't had the time or inclination to follow the detailed blog coverage of the Libby trial, but I really would like to read some detailed coverage of the dynamic between the professional journalists and the bloggers who get to have so much more fun and show their emotions. Is the static between the two groups manifested only in the form of repressed, repressive shushing? The real reporters can't express much of what they feel about the bloggers, who must be irritating the hell out of them, can they? It wouldn't be professional. Plus, the bloggers would blog about it!

Well, Jane Hamsher is there, and she's the producer of "Natural Born Killers," a movie about media (and murder). I'd like to see the movie about life in that little courthouse media room. No, the script needn't depict bloody mayhem. I like a nice dark satire myself. Or a documentary (if it's not too late). But a romantic comedy would do just as well. Do you want the girl or the boy to be the blogger?

Things I read/watched but don't quite feel like blogging about this morning.

1. People kind of hate real estate agents.

2. Maybe you really don't have to save that much for your retirement.

3. A developmentally disabled guy reacts to opposition to a group home for the developmentally disabled.

4. An autistic woman demonstrates what she considers to be her language.

5. One night, back in the 60s, Bob Dylan did a call-in advice show on the radio.

6. Allen Shawn wrote a book about his phobias, but maybe he's not all that phobic.

7. A law and economics professor did a study that correlates earnings to skin tone.

8. Professor Bainbridge gives up on the "magazine" format for his blog.

9. The Swampland bloggers are squabbling.

10. Hillary Clinton needs to get some more votes in Iowa.

11. Powerline is at a conservative summit of some sort.

12. People don't like to shop at The Gap so much anymore.

13. Seminary students don't necessarily feel like becoming ministers.

14. An episcopal rector mocked parishioners and got in trouble.

15. An ugly incident upset people on a campus.

16. Elia behaved badly on "Top Chef."

17. People are talking about Libby and Rove and Cheney.

18. Bush is resigning himself to an Iraq resolution.

19. A guy had amnesia.

20. Angelina Jolie might be in a bad mood.

"Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others."

So read the note from Dick Cheney, translated for the jury by Scooter Libby's lawyer Ted Wells, paraphrased by Michael Isikoff:

The vice president was not going to allow Karl Rove to be protected and Libby to be sacrificed. Libby had stuck his neck “in the meat grinder” because he had been authorized by President Bush himself to talk to reporters and rebut what the White House considered unfair criticism by Wilson that the intelligence about Iraq had been “twisted.” And the “incompetence” Cheney was referring to was by the CIA which, he claimed, was responsible for whatever the White House had gotten wrong about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction.

It looks like the trial is going to be quite a meat grinder. Per Isikoff:

Well’s argument was both brilliant and complex-and perhaps difficult for non-news hounds on the jury to follow. But it raised the prospect that the Libby trial will now turn into a horror show for the White House, forcing current and former top aides to testify against each other and revealing an administration that has been in turmoil over the Iraq war for more than three years.

Judging a candidate by his fiction writing.

George Allen attacks Jim Webb for the tawdriness in his novels. The stuff is rather awful, but it does seem lame to go after fiction. Politicians who dabble in fiction writing usually throw in sex scenes, and these things nearly always look ridiculous out of context. But do the desire to write a sex scene and the failure to do a very good job of it say anything about a person's competence as a legislator? Maybe there's a shred of information in there with all the salaciousness. And it does provide the occasion to remind us of other bad sex written by politicians, like that dreadful thing Scooter Libby wrote about bears.

ADDED: Jim Webb's writing career is clearly more substantial than the usual "[p]oliticians who dabble in fiction writing." And the line involving the father and son -- shown out of context at the link -- is not part of a sexually titillating scene as I discovered by going to Amazon and use the search-inside-the-book function to see the line in context. Click on the comments for more discussion.

UPDATE: Webb explains the scene:

"It's not a sexual act," Webb told [radio host Mark] Plotkin regarding the "Lost Soldiers" excerpt. "I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist."

"The duty of a writer is to illuminate his surroundings," he added.

Coincidentally, a Cambodian woman in Las Vegas is facing sexual assault charges for performing a similar act on her young son, according to an Oct. 14 report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The article quotes an office manager for the Cambodian Association of America, who described the act as a sign of respect or love.

"It's an exception," Thira Srey told the Review-Journal of the practice. According to the report, the act is usually performed by a mother or caretaker on a child who is one year old or younger. In Webb's novel, the child is four years old.

Did Patrick Fitzgerald act improperly?

The NYT asks, in light of what we've just found out: that he knew the identity of the leaker all along.

Now, the question of whether Mr. Fitzgerald properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in continuing to pursue possible wrongdoing in the case has become the subject of rich debate on editorial pages and in legal and political circles....

Mr. Fitzgerald’s decision to prolong the inquiry once he took over as special prosecutor in December 2003 had significant political and legal consequences. The inquiry seriously embarrassed and distracted the Bush White House for nearly two years and resulted in five felony charges against Mr. Libby, even as Mr. Fitzgerald decided not to charge Mr. Armitage or anyone else with crimes related to the leak itself.

Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald’s effort to find out who besides Mr. Armitage had spoken to reporters provoked a fierce battle over whether reporters could withhold the identities of their sources from prosecutors and resulted in one reporter, Judith Miller, then of The New York Times, spending 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify to a grand jury.

Since this week’s disclosures about Mr. Armitage’s role, Bush administration officials have argued that because the original leak came from a State Department official, it was clear there had been no concerted White House effort to disclose Ms. Wilson’s identity.

Why did Fitzgerald do it? "The inquiry seriously embarrassed and distracted the Bush White House...." That looks rather glaring.

Mr. Fitzgerald, who has spoken infrequently in public, came close to providing a defense for his actions at a news conference in October 2005, when Mr. Libby was indicted. Mr. Fitzgerald said that apart from the issue of whether any crime had been committed, the justice system depended on the ability of prosecutors to obtain truthful information from witnesses during any investigation.

Do you want to unleash the prosecutors of the world to follow that theory, that they ought to go ahead and investigate what they know is not a crime, because by exercising your prosecutorial powers you might cause someone to commit a crime? But Fitzgerald did not defend that theory. He only tried to justify indicting someone for perjury when he had no one to indict for the crime he was investigating. These are two different things!

The Plame leak "came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone."

Writes Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, revealing that the source was Richard Armitage.

...Armitage was a member of the administration's small moderate wing. Along with his boss and good friend, [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, he had deep misgivings about President George W. Bush's march to war. A barrel-chested Vietnam vet who had volunteered for combat, Armitage at times expressed disdain for Dick Cheney and other administration war hawks who had never served in the military. Armitage routinely returned from White House meetings shaking his head at the armchair warriors. "One day," says Powell's former chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, "we were walking into his office and Rich turned to me and said, 'Larry, these guys never heard a bullet go by their ears in anger ... None of them ever served. They're a bunch of jerks'."

But officials at the White House also told reporters about Wilson's wife in an effort to discredit Wilson for his public attacks on Bush's handling of Iraq intelligence. Karl Rove confirmed to Novak that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and days later offered the same information to Time reporter Matt Cooper. The inquiry into the case led to the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged. Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.

It will be interesting to see how the bloggers who were hot for blood over Plamegate will respond to this news. You can watch for who links to the Newsweek story at Memeorandum, here. TalkLeft tries to keep hope alive:

I suspect Cheney is still in his cross-hairs. And Ari Fleischer is a key witness against Libby. Somehow, I suspect Ari Fleishcher has given more to Fitzgerald than we know.

Liberal Values finds the silver lining: "Maybe this will put an end to all those conservative blogs which are spreading preposterous claims that it was Joe Wilson himself who revealed his wife’s identity." Yeah, put an end to all those conservative blogs.

Can you never back off and say that your side overdid it? It would improve your credibility you know.

"You cannot say that it is unimportant and something you forgot."

Says Richard A. Sauber (lawyer for Time's Matthew Cooper), explaining the relationship between the new revelations (that Scooter Libby took part in authorized disclosures to controvert war critic Joe Wilson) and Libby's defense to perjury (that he forgot who said what about Wilson's wife Valerie Plame).

Meanwhile, Libby's lawyer, William Jeffress, says the special prosecutor's revelation "is a complete sidelight" to the charge against his client, that "It's got nothing to do with Wilson's wife."

Fitzgerald's filing was meant specifically to undermine Libby's claim that the issue of the CIA's employment of Plame was of "peripheral" interest to Libby at the time. He said in the filing that leaks regarding Plame were meant to embarrass Wilson by suggesting his wife had organized a CIA-sponsored trip by Wilson to probe Iraq's alleged purchase of nuclear material -- in short, to suggest his trip resulted from nepotism.

Fitzgerald argued, in essence, that the White House effort to rebut Wilson's criticism was so intense, and so preoccupying, that Libby could not have forgotten what he said about Plame. Fitzgerald also noted that Plame's employment was specifically raised as a relevant matter by Cheney, who had directed Libby to disclose information from the NIE.

Even if the two subjects have something to do with each other, the question is how much weight this evidence has. How do you prove someone is lying when they say they forgot? One way is to prove this is the sort of thing you could not have forgotten because of its connection with something else you were paying intensely close attention to.

Quite aside from the prosecution of Scooter Libby are the charges that President Bush was hypocritical for declassifying information to support the war when he has been critical of the unauthorized leaking of information:

[T]he report that the president was himself approving a leak may do serious political damage, said [historian Rick] Shenkman, who has a blog on presidential politics. "It does give the public such a powerful example of hypocrisy that I think it might linger for a while," he said.

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, disputed the charge of a double standard on leaks. "There is a difference between declassifying information in the national interest and the unauthorized disclosure" of national security information, Mr. McClellan said Friday. Of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, part of which Mr. Libby shared with Judith Miller, then a Times reporter, Mr. McClellan said, "There was nothing in there that would compromise national security."

Mr. McClellan's tone contrasted sharply with that of administration officials after the N.S.A. story broke in December. Mr. Bush told a news conference at the time: "My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Others picked up the theme, including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director. On Feb. 2, Mr. Goss told a Senate committee, "It is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."

I hope people will be able to keep these stories straight, but they are complicated and likely to merge, which is, of course, what Bush's critics want.

I am a hypocrite...

But so are you.

Except that I'm not. Still, thanks for admitting that you are!

The subject: the on-and-off concern about national security, when looking at the domestic surveillance controversy and the Plame investigation, depending on where the partisan political advantage seems to lie.

The admission: from Ted of Crooked Timber, who cries gotcha on me.

The proof that I haven't taken two sides on the two controversies:

Re Plame, I've said:

I have avoided writing [about] the Plame story. There is too much detail to it for me to analyze it and come to a fair conclusion. A man faces criminal prosecution. The temptation is to say either this is a huge deal or this is practically nothing based on how much you'd like to see the Bush Administration wounded. How many bloggers have fallen prey to that temptation? How many bloggers have written about the indictment of I. Lewis Libby without imbuing it with their own political wishes? A man faces criminal prosecution. Let him go to trial, then.

Re domestic surveillance, I've consistently avoided pronouncements about the statutory law and how it relates to the constitutional law on the ground that it is too specialized and complicated. For example, in the long set of comments to this post, I chided a commenter who asserted that the surveillance program was "blatantly" illegal:

You might note that I haven't taken a position. I don't consider myself knowledgable enough to do so, and I really dislike it when other people think they are. Look how modest Kerr was about his analysis. He's an expert, and he still refrained from making any strong assertions. Take a lesson from that.

Later, in the same thread, responding to a commenter who wondered how I could miss some aspect of the FISA statute, I said:

How could I miss it? Simple: I've never even purported to analyze the statute. I can see it's complex, and I've never studied it. I've just chided people who are jumping ahead and saying what it means. I'm not myself doing the thing I'm chiding others for doing.

Shamelessly stripping this post of mine of its context, Ted says "Ann Althouse couldn't care less about Valerie Plame." That post is about the way people like Kos were exulting about "Fitz-mas." I was expressing disgust about "slavering hyenas" gloating about the indictments they hoped to get from the special prosecutor. I wasn't saying I didn't care about that leak. Not there or anywhere else! I await Ted's apology for his self-serving distortion of my writing.

Ted also tries to excuse the leaking of classified information in the domestic surveillance matter on the ground that it's whistleblowing. To that, I've already said (in the comments at the last link):

You can't reveal national security secrets and just say you're a whistleblower. The leak is really outrageous, and people who don't care about it strike me as flat-out partisans who care more about politics than national security. It's quite sickening.

I agree that the Plame leak may have been devoid of any virtuous motive, but that's beside the point. The question is: Are you concerned, in a politically neutral way, about national security? Ted tries to wriggle out of this question by just observing that he isn't seeing the damage to national security and telling me that I ought to prove the damage to national security. That's ridiculous. It's not for each person in possession of classified information to decide for himself how much it matters and to weigh how much good could be done by leaking it. And for those of us on the outside, who don't know the true scope of the program or the terrorist activities, we have no basis to spout off about how damaging the leak was. Blithe yammering about how it didn't really hurt just makes you look all the more partisan.