How Lame a Duck?

Fact: "[T]he overwhelming weight of the evidence at the trial -- including reporters' notes of their interviews with Libby -- showed that Libby had indeed leaked classified information about Plame's identity, even though that wasn't what put him in the dock."

The other two myths: "Bad press doesn't get under Cheney's skin," and "The White House would fire any administration official who leaked classified information about Plame."

Opinion Watch

E. J. Dionne Jr. writes in his Washington Post op-ed column: "At times, a single legal case can come to embody an entire controversy, even an entire era. To support pardoning Scooter Libby has come to mean endorsing an approach to politics and a way of governing that most Americans have come to reject."

Robert D. Novak writes in his column: "The president's seeming indifference to the sentencing of Scooter Libby was bad enough. But it coincided with Bush's apparent determination to retain his friend Alberto Gonzales as attorney general against congressional pressure to depose him.

"Prevailing opinion among Republican office holders, contributors and activists could not differ more from Bush's posture. They regard Libby as a valuable public servant who faces serious prison time thanks to prosecutorial abuse made possible by Bush administration decisions. They see Gonzales as an embarrassment to the party who presides over a hollow Justice Department while presidential staffers search for Senate votes to block a no-confidence motion."

In his Washington Post opinion column, David S. Broder tries to have it both ways, sort of: "This whole controversy is a sideshow -- engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to 'get' Rove for something or other.

"Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable.

"Nonetheless, on the fundamental point, Walton and Fitzgerald have it right. Libby let his loyalty to his boss and to the administration cloud his judgment -- and perhaps his memory -- in denying that he was part of the effort to discredit the Wilson pair. Lying to a grand jury is serious business, especially when it is done by a person occupying a high government position where the public trust is at stake."

Over on Time's blog, Joe Klein writes in support of jail time for Paris Hilton -- but not Scooter Libby: "His 'perjury' -- not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to -- would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren't Dick Cheney's hatchet man."

Glenn Greenwald responds in his blog on Salon: "It is difficult to recall a single episode which has been more revealing of our political culture than the collective Beltway horror over the plight of the poor, maltreated and persecuted (and convicted felon) Lewis Libby. It is hardly surprising that the right-wing movement of which he is a part operates from the premise that their comrades ought to be exempt from political prosecution even when they commit felonies. . . .

"But what the Libby case demonstrates is that so many establishment journalists believe this just as religiously. . . .

"There is no class of people more defensive of the prerogatives of political power than our 'journalist' class, even though, in a healthy and functioning democracy, the exact opposite would be true."