Forget Libby. Forget Rove. Forget Deadeye Dick.

WHERE IS THE FOCKING OUTRAGE??????

One comment. One? Mine?

Go back to sleep, sheep.

Bah!

Outrage. OK.

But "Where's Rove?" What are you talking about?

Outing Plame's prior job at CIA was mean, stupid and self defeating politics and deserves scorn and contempt, because the Admnistration trashed old intelligence operations for short term political gain.

But as Fitzgerald recognized, and as really well described in the Libby indictment, outing Plame wasn't a crime.

The statute involved on outing covert intel operatives has a well defined time period in it. For outing to be a crime the covert operative has to have been operating coverly within 5 years prior to the outing.

Thats what a Democratic controlled Congress eatedin the '80s.

Plame wasn't operatin covertly within 5 years of the "outin", She was reiig a desk at Lanley on a reremennt track when Libby foolisly rescued her from historical oblivion.

So outing Plame wasn't a crime. Stupid. Mean. Self defeating in the long run. Politicaly ebarassing. But not a crime.

Libby was chaged with and convicted for perjury and false statements for what he said to the FBI and the grand jury about who he told what to when.

Libby was not charged with or convicted for outing Plame, because that wasn't a crime.

While folks may be upset about the outing of Plame not being a crime, he bleatings of a mob don't make it so. If folks want what Libby did to be a crime, they need to get Congress to change the underlying statute.

But chaging the statute now will not affect Libby, or Plame, or any of the other players in this farce.

Ex post facto laws and criminal punisment based upon ex post facto laws are both unconstitutioal.

I wonder if the real crime will be Libby's Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card?
I think most of us are waiting for the shoe to drop.

that wasn't a crime.

Thanks for telling us that, five times.

Jack --

That the "outing" itself was not a crime [ that's 6 times (VBG)] underlines the absurdity

The ultimate in federal "political" crime prosecutions was the "Teapot Dome" Scandal in the 1920s, where Interior Secretary Albert Fall was convicted of taking the bribe that California oil man Edward Doheny (he of the same name as the road in LA) was acquitted of giving.