408d8466-9ba2-4e87-bf6c-d148d3d8d63b.jpg

Byron York seems to be having a mini-meltdown today.  First of all, Judge Walton denies nearly all of Libby’s requests for evidence that could prove he is not responsible for global warming,  micturating in public or other crimes he is not charged with.  Says York :

The Big Case is what Fitzgerald originally set out to investigate: Who leaked Mrs. Wilson’s identity, why was it done, and did it violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, or some other law? Fitzgerald has spent untold amounts of money—unlike the old independent counsels, Fitzgerald is not required to report what his office has spent on the case—and has covered every conceivable aspect of the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson’s identity.

"Not required to report what his office has spent on the case."  And yet, he has:

While supervising at least four lawyers and an FBI team in the leak case, Fitzgerald jetted between his downtown Chicago office and borrowed space at 1400 New York Ave. NW, not far from the courthouse where the grand jury meets most Wednesdays and Fridays. In its first 15 months, the investigation cost $723,000, according to the Government Accountability Office. 

As opposed to — oh, I don’t know, Ken Starr and the $40 million he spent investigating the non-event that was Whitewater.

He has questioned officials across the executive branch, including the president and vice president. He has learned about the Big Case as much as one man with subpoena power, no supervision, unlimited funds, and no hesitation to threaten reporters with jail can learn. He just doesn’t want to talk about it. 

Boy Barbara Comstock York must still be sore from getting that smackdown from Judge Walton about being a blabbermouth.  I’m sure the thought of an ethical prosecutor who doesn’t leak to political operatives is galling them to death.  Ah, the glory days of Ken Starr.

He then goes on to accuse Glenn Greenwald’s book of being artificially promoted onto the New York Times Bestseller List: 

Amazon executives told me they had no good explanation for it, although they believed their ranking system had sufficient safeguards against bulk purchases or other attempts to game the system.  So the success of How Would A Patriot Act? appeared to be a legitimately new phenomenon of blog-powered book sales.  Now, a number of bloggers on the Left are delighted that the book will appear on the New York Times paperback bestseller list on June 11; you can see an image of the page here.  The question I have is that How Would A Patriot Act? is the only book on the list about which the Times notes that "some bookstores report receiving bulk orders."  I’m not suggesting that there is anything untoward going on, but does anyone know how big the bulk orders are and where they might be coming from? 

I’m sure that the first conclusion York and his kind jump to is bulk sales from think tanks — you know, the wingnut welfare without which any of their unreadable screeds would ever touch the hem of the NYT bestseller list.  I feel quite confident in reassuring him that nothing of the sort happened, this is genuine public interest, just as the Amazon people assured him it was.  One of the reasons we started the FDL Book Salon was to offer public grassroots support for liberal writers that could offset the unfair advantage wingnuts have for the propagation of their eliminationist rhetoric with all that big thinktank money.

It’s nice to see that they are completely exasperated with the fact that it is working.

Related posts:

  1. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and the “Unremarkable” Meat Grinder
  2. Cheney’s Betrayal Made an IIPA Charge for Libby Possible
  3. Isikoff Doubles Down on His Anonymous Leak from Cheney’s Lawyer
  4. Cheney Interview: Washington Post Losing Its Ability to Report, Too
  5. The Bush Fairy Tale on the Libby Pardon