Scandal Overkill?

In the end, journalists might stir more hostility this time than when they were publishing every allegation that could be vacuumed up from Starr's shop. Some leaks, of course, are important. In this case, reporters, led by columnist Robert Novak, were the conduits for what the indictment makes clear was an administration smear campaign against Wilson. That's why Fitzgerald dragged them before a grand jury, and that's why Tim Russert, Matt Cooper and Miller -- the Times reporter who agreed to misleadingly describe Libby as a "former Hill staffer" -- will undoubtedly be called as witnesses if Libby goes to trial.

Libby may be charged with lying about his conversations with journalists, but much of the public resents the coziness that allowed those discussions to take place under a cloak of anonymity.

USA Today looked to be playing an early Halloween prank on Condoleezza Rice. In a routine wire photo on the paper's Web site, the secretary of State looked downright ghoulish, with demonic eyes reminiscent of a vampire's. It turns out USA Today had electronically manipulated the picture, taking it down only after blogger Michelle Malkin uncovered the deception.

USA Today spokesman Steve Anderson says the doctored picture was an inadvertent error. "This is just the case of a newly hired dot-com staffer who sharpened the photo and brightened her face," he says. That, says Anderson, "certainly failed to meet our editorial standards."

It's not the kind of e-mail you want to get from your boss. "Lloyd Grove is a [bleep]ing idiot. His page is stupid," wrote Martin Dunn, editorial director of the New York Daily News, where Grove plies his gossip trade. Grove discovered the missive -- first reported by New York Post rival Richard Johnson -- because Dunn mistakenly forwarded it to him. The back story: Grove had written about "an apparent case of mistaken identity" when People had to stop the presses to correct a caption on a photo of Jennifer Aniston and her new squeeze, Vince Vaughn, to reflect the fact that it was actually Aniston's movie double.

People deputy managing editor Editor Larry Hackett says Grove's item was "ridiculous" -- though accurate -- because inaccurate captions are fixed all the time. Hackett says he e-mailed Dunn to "express my displeasure" at the "nyahh nyahh" bit of journalism. Dunn then sent his friend Hackett the obscene response that also wound up in Grove's in-box.

"It's not worth worrying about," insists Grove, a former Washington Post gossip columnist, who says he walked into Dunn's office and jokingly threw the same epithet at him. "It wasn't pleasant, but both Martin and I are past it. We plan to have a wine-soaked dinner in the near future."

Fall-out from Libby Indictment

Boy, the White House must have been doing some serious leaking last night, since almost everyone had the Samuel Alito for Supreme Court story before the 8 a.m. announcement.

By the way, 55 percent judge Bush's presidency a failure, says USA Today .

What's the MSM's damage assessment of the Libby indictment?

Time : " 'The problem is that the President doesn't want to make changes,' says a White House adviser who is not looking for a West Wing job, 'but he's lost some of his confidence in the three people he listens to the most.' Those three are his Vice President, Dick Cheney, whose top aide, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, has been charged with brazenly obstructing the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame; Bush senior adviser Karl Rove, who while not indicted has still emerged as a player in the scandal; and chief of staff Andrew Card, who gets some of the blame for bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina and even more for the botched Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. 'All relationships with the President, except for his relationship with Laura, have been damaged recently,' the White House adviser says."