Truth really does lead to power. The problem the liberals have in capitalizing on a "Truth to Power" slogan is getting the truth part right. Obviously, with the truth part wrong, there is no power to be had, and that's the way it probably will remain for a long time. Visceral desires do not automatically equal truth no matter how much one wants them to...

CY and all,

Been over there all day watching the interesting comments. The regular posters who normally defend TO haven't had the guts to show their faces. TO is getting pounded. Marc Ash's latest is that "We are stunned at yesterday's developments....." He calls for Luskin to lay his cards on the table like TO did. To funny. The only thing TO laid on the table is innuendo and rumor - no facts per say.

Now you have Mensa-Man (AKA Slow Down) trying to say that since the quote was that Fitz didn't "anticipate" indicting Rove it must mean that he is still thinking about it. It is way to funny.

yep, conservatives always get the truth right. We need to find all the liberals out there and beat the visceral desires right out of them.

My view is that Fitzgerald did not go against Rove on perjury charges not so much because Fitzgerald did not have a case, even though he didn’t, but because it would have been too much political trouble for him, even though Fitzgerald very much needs something to justify the years and millions of dollars spent on the horribly misconceived “Plumegate” investigation.

The time is long overdue to face up to why no one has been charged with a substantive legal violation and to call for Fitzgerald to close up shop after the Libby alleged perjury case (which Fitzgerald should not have brought).

In this case, there was no violation and could be no violation of either of the statutes in question -- the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act.

There was no violation of the Intelligence Agent Identities Act because: (i) Washington D.C. desk bound CIA analyst Valerie Plume Wilson was not “covert” within the meaning of the Act (which requires at the least a foreign assignment within five years of the revelation that Valerie Plume Wilson did not have); (ii) the Government was not taking “affirmative measures” to conceal Valerie Plume Wilson’s identity; and (iii) the revealer (whomever that person was) did not know that the Government was taking those measures to conceal Valerie Plume Wilson’s identity because no such measures were being taken. The requirements here applied were in fact written into the Intelligence Agent Identities Act law so that political debate or journalistic pursuit of a story would not be chilled by its operation.

There was no violation of the 1917 Espionage Act, which prohibits revealing national defense information such as ship movements. There was nothing ever intentionally to harm the national defense; and if ever there was an attempt to stretch the 1917 Espionage Act to cover what was part of a political debate concerning this country’s decision to go to war in Iraq, then you would have a major First Amendment case. (A bit of legal history: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous words interpreting the First Amendment about the “marketplace of ideas” were stated in a 1919 opinion in Abrams v. United States, which arose out of a conviction under a World War I-vintage sedition act for the defendant’s circulation of petitions denouncing then President Wilson’s decision to send troops to Bolshevik Russia. While Holmes then wrote in dissent, the majority opinion is now long forgotten and Holmes’s words became the law – when then Chief Justice Rehnquist penned his opinion in the Falwell v. Hustler case, it was Holmes he quoted.)

I think Fitzgerald deserves severe public criticism and reproach for a drawn out investigation when there were clearly no violations of Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act and important First Amendment interests were compromised. In the context of political arguments over the decision to launch the Iraq War, Joseph Wilson penned an op-ed piece published by the New York Times containing false information, and Bush Administration officials responded, as well they should have. Yet, that political debate got dragged into a criminal investigation as to possible violation of laws that were written and interpreted not to apply in this kind of situation and not to interfere with political debate. Fitzgerald has been and is thinking about himself in a role where the public interest must scrupulously be served. Fitzgerald may be a smooth operator, but if you look at substance, you realize that he really is no good. I hope that Ted Welles (Libby’s lawyer) gives Fitzgerald the beating of Fitzgerald’s life; Ted Welles is capable of doing that.

matt a,

You miss the point. It's not that we were right - which of course we were - but more that those at truthout continue to try to hang onto the hope that the articles they swore by are still correct. It's the absolute denial of facts that is funny.