“L: No. I recall being surprised when Russert told me.”

I bet Russert’s real surprised, too! That should be an interesting point in Russert’s testimony.

The prosecution will play this for Russert, then ask, if only for effect, “did Mr.Libby seem surprised when you mentioned Valerie Plame’s CIA connections.”

Then Russert will get a all red-faced and angry and start shaking his head before the question is finished and he’ll cry out plaintively “I did not tell Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame, he told me…”

Simple enough

Case closed…

Dang dude, why did you have to write that and cause me to uncontrolably spit my lunch out across my desk? I truly lost it when I read your post. You win! Someone make sure Fitz really does pull this tactic!!! That would be worth a trip to DC, just to see it happen.

dmg @
15

that’s it? that’s all wells has — scooter didn’t leak to sanger, thus he didn’t leak to another reporter?

Ah, so it’s Defense By Logical Fallacy.

seriously starting to consider that libby’s counsel is more about protecting cheney than it is about, you know, presenting a decent defense for its ostensible client.

That could very well be: “Hey, we’ll arrange for one of our sugar daddies to pay your legal fees — just sit tight until Bush pardons you.” (Except that if Bush pardons him, it throws the final shovelful of dirt on the GOP’s chances in 2008.)

That action[the pardon]wonld be after november,2hrs before the new prez,John Edwards is sworn

I’m an evil liberal who has been following your reportage on the Libby trial. It helps me to have fair and balanced debate with my righteous pro-american Conservative friends. May I please share with you a few thoughts on today’s article- “Libby Judge: Even I Don’t Know Plame’s Status”

“Of course, Mrs. Wilson is the woman at the center of the CIA-leak affair”
If it weren’t for the leaker, we wouldn’t have an ‘affair’.
Libby is the defendant at the center of this trial. You are obfuscating from the get-go.

judge to jury: “…’not even to think about’ — Mrs. Wilson’s job status”
A search of the trial transcript doesn’t reveal this instruction.

“…stunning in its implications”:
Perhaps to avoid a conflict of interest, preserve judiciary ethics, and without any material need to know; the judge simply respects national security secrets- past and present. Kind of hard for you to fathom?
stunning- causing or capable of causing, astonishment, bewilderment, or loss of consciousness or strength (Random House). Your choice of words clarifies your own state of mind, not the judge’s.

“Perhaps the judge’s position is the legally correct one;… But…”
What are you saying Mr. York? Screw the law? You’re a White House correspondent, get back in your place.

“…it allows the prosecution to suggest, without actually saying, that Libby and the Bush administration committed some sort of crime.”
a) The opposite could be argued.
b) Is the defense served if the prosecution is free to state explicitly that a [perhaps treasonous] crime was committed. Huh?

Your conclusion:
“It’s a bizarre situation — a CIA-leak trial without the CIA leak. And, at least under its present restrictions, without much hope for justice, either.”

I would have to concur with you on this though likely for different reasons than your own.

Warm Regards
_______________________________________________________

In Marcy’s roundtable with Byron York on C-Span a week or so ago, she fielded two antagonistic calls as compared to none for York (if I recall correctly). One of these calls was straight out of the Fox/WH playbook laid out for this issue over three years ago: denounce Wilson’s character, Plame’s professional status, Fitzgerald’s politics and Marcie’s (”the liberal attack Press”) integrity.

As an aside, the caller(a man) accused Marcy of being a co-conspirator with Katie Couric; it was precious.

York is just like his audience: educated, intelligent and incapable of extricating his own emotions and values from a non-human system of government. He’s telling the judge what to do here. He’s a journalist. What a punhead.

F: Do you recall talking to her about Wilson’s wife?

L: I don’t have any recollection about that. She’s a member of the press, not a WH official, so that would make an impact in my mind.

F: You would remember talking to a reporter about it more than a WH official?

L: Yes.

Reading this transcript of Scooter’s lies is like listening to/reading/watching when one of my students at the university makes excuses–painful and depressing and OBVIOUS that they are lying (which really ticks me off because I bend over backwards to give them every chance in the world).

Excuse me, I have to turn down the volume on my bu!!$hit detector as it won’t stop going off….

Fitz did the same thing yesterday with Libby in his interrogation about the June “12th” meeting…getting him to detail all sorts of things about his impressions of Cheney and his feelings about the information about learning that “the Ambassador’s wife” worked in CPD, saying that it was just “trivia”, not one of the talking points, so “I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have passed it on” to Pincus, etc. Fitz shows that Libby recalls all sorts of details about the meeting and even that he had impressions that he recalled about their reaction to the information.

But then he forgot! And then he recalls it in this superb, self-exonerating detail. Fitz brilliantly laid this trap…demonstrating that Libby never did forget…or if he did, he made up all the other information to make it appear that he’s innocent.

Since we’re in kind of a court break, way, way OT: Haggard Pronounced ‘Completely Heterosexual’.

Guess I can’t use that joke about “feeling haggard” anymore.

Did they watch?

that’s it? that’s all wells has — scooter didn’t leak to sanger, thus he didn’t leak to another reporter?

Ah, so it’s Defense By Logical Fallacy.

seriously starting to consider that libby’s counsel is more about protecting cheney than it is about, you know, presenting a decent defense for its ostensible client.

That could very well be: “Hey, we’ll arrange for one of our sugar daddies to pay your legal fees — just sit tight until Bush pardons you.” (Except that if Bush pardons him, it throws the final shovelful of dirt on the GOP’s chances in 2008.)

We can laugh at the Sanger defense, but this is just the sort of “if it does not fit, you must acquit” type of evidentiary testimony that allows one juror with a predisposition to acquit to infer reasonable doubt.

Of course, a juror for any reason can find a defendant not guilty. But, more importantly, directly providing non-circumstantial doubt that a glove the prosecution claims was used by the murderer in a murder didn’t fit the defendant’s hand, is very different than trying to circumstantially prove innocense by effectively stating that a defendant on trial for robbing bank A didn’t rob bank Z.

Sure, it’s possible that it might put doubt in to some jurors mind, extremely unlikely, but there is nothing analagous to what was done at the OJ trial.

from Slate’s dispatch [re the cafe at the National Gallery]

Eeeew, does this mean John Dickerson will be there?