>More partisan politics. Let's give that angle a miss, then.
>
>I am surprised you seem untroubled by the intentional outing of a covert CIA agent.

I was particularly troubled when it really happened. But many of the same people who had the vapors over the "outing" of Pflame - who was not covert - didn't seem to mind when Phillip Agee got a lot of good people, including the Athens station chief, killed. Of course, the NYT approved of that one. I was a lot more troubled when the news media thought our ability to bug Osama's sat phone fell under "the public's right to know".

And I would have been a lot more honked off at Scooter if he had been the leak. How many years did Richard Armatige get?

I think her name may have been leaked for political reasons anyway, but I also think Joe Wilson was playing a political game and there are elements within the agency that are and always have been a lot more political that I think they should be. This whole thing is a lot more complicated than press coverage. But sending people to jail should mean something - not just a way to embarrass the other team. Sending people to jail because their political faction lost a skirmish is just bad policy.

I don't care passionately about the Scooter thing, but I am disturbed by the knee-jerk reaction to it. This is Whitewater redux and I wasn't an enthusiast for that either.


>
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>>I don't really care much about Scooter, but I think the prosecution was blatantly political. Not the kind of crime to put somebody in jail for. Much the way I felt about Whitewater etc. Jails are for people who are violent and a danger to others.
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>>I brought up Sandy Berger since his behavior was so blatantly criminal - no "I can't recall" grey areas here - smuggled classified documents out of archives and destroyed evidence. That is traditionally the kind of thing you do go to jail for, but I wouldn't see any point in jailing him either. I just don't like to see political jackals throwing their opponents in prison.
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>>Joe Wilson blatantly lied publicly about a lot of things. Should he go to jail?
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>>How about Clinton? His lies to a grand jury were easily as venal as Scooters. Jail him?
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>>Of course not.
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>>I will at least credit Bush for only commuting the jail time and letting the rest stand. Libby did something wrong, fine. But nobody named "Scooter" should be sent to jail - or even my old high school <g> It just wouldn't be pretty.
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>>>>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/02/libby.sentence/index.html
>>>>
>>>>Yeah, heck of a thing when somebody will use their power to commute the sentence of a friend. Better the pardons should happen on the last day of office and be paid for in cash ... ( no, I didn't even mention Mark Rich ...)
>>>>
>>>>If Scooter Libby deserves 30 months in prison, Sandy Berger should be in Pelican Bay. <s>
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>>>
>>>I know there will be plenty of nakedly partisan reaction but have to say I am disappointed to hear it from you. Is Libby's sentence being commuted OK because someone else's was worse? It still stinks. This was a giant upraised finger to the judicial system and to the jury that convicted him. (Even though they sympathized with him for being the fall guy). Which, of course, is entirely in character for an administration that thinks it is answerable to no one.