I voted for Jim Marcinkowski once; and I’d do it again.

I sure wish we had him representing us in Congress instead of Tom Delay lieutenant Mike Rogers.

Hey, fellow Michigander! I was hoping and praying for Big Jim to take Debbie Stabenow’s district away from Bush minion Mike Rogers. I have nothing good to say about Rahm Emanuel for recruiting Jim and then not giving him any funding (and the so-and-so had the nerve to complain about Howard Dean not giving all the DNC money to Rahm to misuse).

Signed, Thank goodness the lege’s gerrymandering left me in Sandy Levin’s district

To keep this from being drift: When Fitz prosecutes [fill in the blank] for leaking Plame’s identity, I hope he calls Jim Marcinkowski as a witness to talk about the importance of keeping covert things covert. I think he’d impresse the jury as a straight talker.

When I was on jury duty recently, a flipchart was an essential tool. We tallied each person’s position on the spectrum of innocence to guilt to see who needed their world view corrected toward unanimity, and then used the charts to lay out evidence and then query the holdouts about how they could maintain their idiotic positions in the face of the evidence. Finally, the nice little Churchian woman who didn’t want to vote guilty because it might lead to jail time and she didn’t trust anything the government said, and the government could have had video surveillance (of something that happened before the crime was even detected) had to admit that maybe the perp did something wrong. Guilty! Though not as guilty as the sloppy prosecution truly warranted. And subsequently sentenced to a lot more jail time than any of us thought would be fair, but juries don’t get a say in that. Dumbass should have been more careful when consorting with criminals and trying to impress them.

So I take the flipcharts as a sign that the nonclueless jurors are taking charge.

The jury was told by a Fed. prosecutor that people get killed by these actions,there is a cloud over the VP’s office,etc.And the jury is tasked with deciding the fate of the VP’s chief of staff and White House official.Pretty heavy stuff.The jury feels this more than we know and want to be very careful and thorough regarding this huge decision they have to make.

I agree totally with your comment. The jury understands the ramifications of their decisions and wants to ensure they give due diligence to all of the evidence presented in this trial. I think they also understand the historical importance of their decisions as well.

Elliott @
208

If there isn’t a verdict soon, I’m going to have to start abusing substances.

I’m having a Martini!

Cheers!
*clink*

egregious @ 183

Count me in!

Office supplies…mmmmmm….

Don’t you just love it when the Quill catalog or the Staples catalog arrives in the mail??

Or better yet, Levenger…I know TRex will share that opinion with me. Mmm. Fountain pens.

Ooooh I never heard of Quill before.
Thanks for the idea Rayne!
I typed this as ‘ideaRayne’ which I kinda like.
Like a superhero name.

Elliott @ 208

What did those poor substances ever do to you? ;)

lofl

If there isn’t a verdict soon, I’m going to have to start abusing substances.

I’m having a Martini!

Jim Marcinkowski is in a very good position to speak [write] authoritatively on this issue. He’s been a staff attorney for the Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutor’s office, and he was in Valerie Plame’s CIA training class. He understands the issue from both the law’s and the CIA’s perspective. He’s a recovering Republican, too, having switched parties in disgust at Valerie’s outing.

Alicia @ 35

Correct me if I’m wrong, lawyer-types, but it seems to me that the debate over covert/overt is completely off-base.

There would not be a trial in the first place if she was not covert.

Why would they have an investigation at all if revealing her identity was not outing a covert agent?

There you go, being all reality-based. The villains who claim there’s no crime because Valerie Plame was just a secretary or something in CIA headquarters aren’t unaware of her real status, they’re lying about it in hopes more people will believe the lie than know the truth.

MEC @ 73

PWT @ 51

Facts not in evidence. There has not, to this date, been any ‘official’ confirmation that Mrs. Wilson was ‘covert’. When it has been confirmed by the CIA that she was ‘covert’, only then can any arguments be made based on that premise.

The request for a criminal investigation of the revelation of Valerie Plame’s employment by the CIA was made by the CIA. If she hadn’t been covert, it wouldn’t have been a crime to reveal her employment, and so the CIA would not have requested the criminal investigation. That’s logic.

The fact of the request for a criminal investigation should be official enough confirmation for any reasonable person.

My point exactly.

However, the request for investigation has not been made public and therefore, its contents are unknown. It can be inferred that by this request, she was covert but it can not be taken as a fact. I can infer that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, but until said sun does in fact rise, it can not be taken as fact.

Unless you have some facts that I don’t, for now we can make no judgements as to wheter or not Mrs. Wilson was covert. Any arguments attached to such conclusions are just a wast of time.