As BayStateLibrul pointed out in threads, SCOTUS denied the Wilsons cert today in their lawsuit against Dick Cheney and his band of leakers. As bmaz points out, the news is unsurprising. The die was cast by John Bates’ exploitation (and to some extent contortion) of glaring and gaping holes in the pleading by Plame/Wilson.

I've been reluctant to embrace suggestions that torture, iraq, and Valerie Plame were all going to coalesce into one linked story. But it is increasingly looking like that may be the case.

So much for that message discipline and failure to leak tour, Karl. Dickie Boy is peeved: In the waning days of the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a last-ditch campaign to persuade his boss to pardon Lewis (Scooter) Libby - and was furious when President George W. Bush wouldn't budge.

It is ON, beyotches.

It's all part of a pattern: Republican jackass wants to show off what a big swinging insider dick he is, ends up blurting out obviously confidential information without a care in the world for what the consequences might be. Sometimes those consequences are comic, like in Virginia, but more often they're tragic or have the potential to be. And with the immediacy of the internet, there's no media filter to stop the dickitude from seeing the light of day.

Absolutely no shame, no remorse, no public pangs of conscience...and none expected: Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, spoke last week at Loyola Marymount University as part of a campuswide 1st Amendment Week. In his remarks, he reiterated his belief that government leaks can cause serious harm, and that newspapers should respect government secrecy....

There's a detail in the WaPo story on Charles Duelfer's new book that suggests, at a time when DOD was pushing Ahmed Chalabi to run Iraq, they were targeting Iraqi leaders for harrassment and arrest.

I tire of this one. But since Tucker Carlson fails to disclose -- again -- this salient little tidbit regarding his self-interested family business in Scooter Libby? Here goes: ...unfortunately for Tucker, the secret got published on the Scooter Libby Defense Slush Fund website...and blabbed all over Washington...and Arianna found out about it. "But with all he's had to say about the case, there is one thing that Tucker Carlson has failed to mention: That his father, Richard Carlson, is on the advisory committee of the Libby Legal Defense Trust, the GOP-heavy-hitter-laden group that has so far raised $2 million. Indeed, Richard Carlson was the Early Money Is Like Yeast of Libby defense fund-raisers, having couriered a check to Libby's home the morning he was indicted...."

Just when you think you cannot feel more sick to your stomach:...Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?
Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'
Ron: Which is the White House?
Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president....

That the Appeals Court threw out the Wilsons' suit is not surprising. That the logic in Sentelle's opinion is so crappy and ignorant is. It basically argues that because Valerie Wilson has no recourse to the Privacy Act wrt Cheney and Libby and Rove, those thugs can violate Joe Wilson's First and Fifth Amendment rights too!

The news that the CIA may have forged a letter alleging ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq reminds me that OVP--particularly Scooter Libby--was the one behind many of the Iraq-Al Qaeda claims.