October 29, 2005 by s.z.

Stupid Scooter Commentary from All Over

1.  Here's part of the Wall Street Journal's editorial on the Scooter indictments (emphasis added):

Unless Mr. Fitzgerald can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Libby was lying, and doing so for some nefarious purpose, this indictment looks like a case of criminalizing politics.

Yes, unless Fitzgerald can not only prove that Libby was lying, but show beyond a reasonable doubt that he was doing so for some nefarious purpose (like to keep his sex life private), then this indictment is just a big nothing, and you should pay it no mind.

2.  From Wired News: "Bloggers Yawn at Libby Indictment"

The much-awaited disclosure of a federal grand jury indictment in the Valerie Plame investigation Friday looks to have been a bit of a letdown for blogosphere political hounds.

One indication: Following the announcement of charges levied against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, the most searched name among blog readers was Janet Jackson.

"Go figure," said David Sifry, founder of Technorati, a search engine for blogs.

Of course, Technoratia is used by, oh, four people (and those four people seem to be 12-year-old boys).  But yeah, this proves that political bloggers couldn't care less about the Scooter indictments. 

Several bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum characterized the indictment announcement (.pdf) as less dramatic than expected.

"Lying to a grand jury is serious, if true. The rest is Martha Stewart stuff," wrote one poster on the blog Instapundit.

A commentator at GOP Bloggers expressed a similar sentiment: "This case ranks up there with Martha Stewart lying to investigators about a legal stock sale.... No crime was committed until the investigation began."

Bloggers "on both sides of the political spectrum" (i.e., a poster at Instapundit and a commentator at GOP Bloggers) are quoted -- so, I guess this claim  must be true.

(BTW, that poster at Instapundit is named Glenn Reynolds.  Sure, he's an obscure, marginal talent, but he does have a name and feelings, damn it!)

Okay, Wired does go on to quote a line from "a poster on Right Wing News" (who is actually blogger John Hawkins), and also notes part of a remark in the comments section of Comments From Left Field -- which indeed proves its thesis that bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum are too busy looking for video of a naked Janet Jackson to care about Scooter.

3.   And here's David Horowitz to tell us about a massive conspiracy theory that involves:

• "A rogue CIA set out to sabotage Bush's war"
• Saddam using the French to forge the Italian yellowcake document, so that Bush would believe it and then get discredited.  (One of Saddam's most clever tricks!)
• "A leftist named Plame illegally recommend[ing] her leftist husband for a mission to Niger." (Yes, per Crazy Davy, if Plame suggested her former-ambassador husband for the unpaid, unclassified assignment to the third-world nation, such an act would be illegal because, um, leftists shouldn't be allowed to have jobs.) 
• Kerry and Edwards trying to "undermine the credibility of their own president" in the "middle of an election" (The scoundrels!)
• And other nefarious dealings that patriot Scooter Libby sought to foil by lying to the grand jury and to FBI agents.

Anyway, it involves way more intrigue than even a direct-to-video spy story.

Scooter Libby was obviously trying to protect his president from a rogue CIA operation which, in conjunction with the French and Saddam were attempting to sabotage America's war effort and restore the fascist Ba'ath Party and its Islamic terrorist allies to power.

Why, Scooter is a true American hero!  Fitzgerald should give the man a medal, not a bunch of indictments!

Scooter Libby obviously has taken the fall for an Administration that can faulted on this score: Whereas abroad it has boldly and courageously taken the heat for policies that are noble and good; in the war at home it has preferred duck rather than take the enemy head on.

The result is that an American doing his duty (in this case attempting to fight a covert war in the media) will probably go to jail for it. He will not be the first.

The other Americans who went to jail for just doing their duty presumably include some of the people on this list.

2:13:26 AM