Ha! I would HAVE to be reading that just as I was cracking into mine, trying to figure out how a legislative history was to be cited…

Thanks for the analysis, Atta. You just saved my department some valuable Westlaw dollars today. ;)

It’s not as though they are suing for damages to the country (although that is the underlying message), so it is just loss of job/future income. While there can be some to and fro about national security aspects of calculating the damage, how and why of the leak becomes pretty much immaterial. I just have a dread that it isn’t going to be as entertaining or informative as one would hope.

This was the ostensible legal issue in the A. Johnson impeachment, wasn’t it?

Is there a notion of malpractice, though? In any professional role (e.g. doctor, lawyer), if you do your job malaciously or extraordinarily incompetently, you can be sued exactly for doing your job — so badly and destructively. If the Pres. or VP purposefully do an end-run around the constitution and this results in real damages to real people, how come they cannot sue for malpractice?

Of course, I’m the one who thinks that legislators who vote for “partial birth abortion” bans and similar malicious mis-sense, should be held accountable for practicing medicine without a license …

No government official shall be immune from prosecution or civil liability except to the extent that such official acted strictly within the proper course of his or her official duties.

I don’t think they want that.

If you were the three respondents, wouldn’t you just take the simplest option of accepting civil liability and going streight to damages? What’s the point of fighting it when the outline of the story is out and what you really want to avoid are the embelishments of details, thus wouldn’t avoiding discovery be the most important thing?

Given the nature of the damages being probably a simple time times earnings lost at the CIA, and this not at all being the real objective of the suit, accepting liability sounds like the best way to go for the WH to keep the story off the news.

Would this be why the John Does are there, to preserve ability to go forward with discovery in case Cheney/Rove/Scooter fold? Can’t see Plame/Wilson going after footsoldiers for any other reason.

Can someone tell me this is a wrong guess as it would be bummer if it turned out this way.

Frankly, both Republicans and Democrats would have to support this course of action. I know, I know, but in this election year, the Republicans can be confronted forthrightly with a challenge that, at its core, is simply a question of right and wrong. Democrats don’t have to commit to a call for impeachment; they can demand simply that Congress fulfill its institutional role of oversight and let due process run its course. Voters cannot fail to recognize the reason in that position. We can demand from Republicans that they play according to the rules of our republic. If Bush & Cheney have done nothing wrong, then they should have nothing to fear from it. We can rightfully take Republicans to task for protecting possible criminal behavior in the highest offices of the land, only because they belong to the same party as the accused.

With very few exceptions, Democrats as always are too intimidated — too chickenshit — to take a strong stand on a matter of principle. But there is no downside, legally or politically, in running our system the way that the Constitution requires, and there is no shame in demanding nothing less of our leaders.

The “official act,” defense, also does not seem justified by the circumstances.

At the end of the day though, I expect a conservative” leaning court to find on behalf of the administration in contravention of the letter and meaning of the law. But that’s what they mean by “strict construction.”