As Froomkin wrote back in back in late May of this year on Fitz’s brief to the judge on sentencing:

Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
…
[W]hen his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger — and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

In Friday’s eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution “unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics.” In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby’s crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

Froomkin quoting Fitz:

“The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment.”

Froomkin concluded:

I suspect that people looking back on this story will see it with greater clarity: As a blatant — and thus far successful — cover-up for the vice president.

As I read it, Kinsley is ultimately asking why should Miller and Novak be able to dodge responsibility for their roles in outing a covert agent, when they knowingly went along with the “nefarious, though inept, campaign to sully Mr. Wilson?” Yes, he uses “nefarious” twice in the same article to describe the hit job by Cheney, Libby, Rove, Miller, Novak, et al.

Scooter Libby is a co-signer of the NeoCon Project for the New American Century. He knew damn well what the goals and objectives of everything Cheney was doing including lying outing Valerie Plame and lying his ass off. Everyone seems to forget that he had his own brain well into the fixing of intelligence around an invasion of Iraq, and the overall goals of the plan. It is inconceivable that he was some naif just doing what he was told.

Scooter Libby is up to his neck in Iraqi and American blood. He is not the fall guy he is a very serious criminal!

fdl reader @ 77

the fact that Libby’s ‘relief’ may signal protection to other conspirators is the VERY reason why questions must be asked and every detail must be examined: in doing so those who are counting on Bush’s ’special’ extra-executive powers will feel less and less secure in their silence.

letting it stand lets Bush’s plan proceed unmolested.

I never advocated not asking questions and following up. I just believe we should use our resources wisely. There are some facts to come to grip with: Bush has the authority to do what he did. It cannot be undone. Libby’s sentence is commuted – period. There will never be any direct evidence linking Bush to any high crime or misdemeanor sufficient to convict him in the U.S. Senate under its current membership. We may, however be able to remove Gonzo and Cheney.

John Dean has been bringing this idea up for quite some time. His articles about this are at John Dean Findlaw. Impeach lower level officials in the Bush administration.

“The crime, if there was one, was leaking government secrets to journalists. If you were investigating that crime, where would you start? Yes, of course, by questioning journalists. The government leakers, if you found them, would be protected by the Fifth Amendment. You would need more and different evidence, and only journalists had it.

The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, followed this commonsense logic straight into a First Amendment buzz saw. News organizations that insisted on the need to get to the bottom of the leak also insisted that no journalist should have to supply information to this investigation.

The leaks that The Times and other papers defended so ardently were not laboratory examples of press freedom at work. Quite the opposite: they were part of the nefarious campaign by the vice president’s office to discredit Mr. Wilson — itself part of the larger plot to convince the world that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was of course part of the plot to get us into the war in the first place. And it worked.”

All of that is unexceptionable to me. Judith Miller wasn’t defending any noble principle when she went to jail, she was protecting Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and their campaign to discredit Joe Wilson and justify the dishonest case for invading Iraq. And that’s what Kinsley is SAYING. Why are you all slamming him for that? What Kinsley is ultimately saying is that the cozy set-up in Washington nowadays, where administration officials use their pets in the mainstream press to act as their agents in placing propaganda in the newspapers and news broadcasts, is THE PROBLEM, and IT IS. That’s way more important than whether Scootie goes to jail. To quote Kinsley again: “if journalists had a more reasonable view about this, the reporters whom Mr. Libby tried to peddle this story to would have said, “Look, outing C.I.A. agents is bad and we are not going to help you do it anonymously.” ” How can you disagree with that?

the fact that Libby’s ‘relief’ may signal protection to other conspirators is the VERY reason why questions must be asked and every detail must be examined: in doing so those who are counting on Bush’s ’special’ extra-executive powers will feel less and less secure in their silence.

letting it stand lets Bush’s plan proceed unmolested.

I never advocated not asking questions and following up. I just believe we should use our resources wisely. There are some facts to come to grip with: Bush has the authority to do what he did. It cannot be undone. Libby’s sentence is commuted – period. There will never be any direct evidence linking Bush to any high crime or misdemeanor sufficient to convict him in the U.S. Senate under its current membership. We may, however be able to remove Gonzo and Cheney.

This is the way the Beltway thinks and acts. It’s Omerta in action. They protect their own and tell America to go fuck itself.

behindthefall @106:

I’m bothered by the disappearance of the meadow birds too. Very bothered. If you go to the Audubon website, they have a list of the birds and you can listen to their calls (which is nice) and I think they also have suggestions for what actions people can take.

How far east or west are you? I’m in the Northeast, and have neither seen nor heard a bobwhite or a whippoorwill since I was a kid!

I did see a group of bobolinks come through this spring, but they did not decide to stay, which was wise on their part, since the farmer cut the field before the birds (red-wings, for the most part) had gotten their youngsters out. (B*st*rd.)

I’m bothered by the disappearance of the meadow birds too. Very bothered. If you go to the Audubon website, they have a list of the birds and you can listen to their calls (which is nice) and I think they also have suggestions for what actions people can take.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 127

Speaker Pelosi. Go after Cheney. Like in impeachment.

Completely OT but I gotta ask a question concerning Big Al Gore:
Has Mr. Conservation divested himself of his Occidental Petroleum shares?

Sorry I didn’t ask sooner in the previous thread, but I’m in the middle of trying to get my 13 year old daughter to understand algebra problems she has to do before beginning high school in September.

In comparison to explaining algebra, finding answers for the wrongs Bushie boy has inflicted upon us seems sooo easy.

I do not like bringing situations from pervious threads forward. As to algebra, I sometimes refer my high school math students to “Purple Math”.

http://purplemath.com/