Criminals

I'm glad that our long national nightmare has ended and we now know who the real culprits are. It will be Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame who will be doing the "frog marching."

Good thing too, seeing as how preznit will tolerate no shenanigans in his White House.

President Bush said yesterday that he will fire anyone in the administration found to have committed a crime in the leaking of a CIA operative's name, creating a higher threshold than he did one year ago for holding aides accountable in the unmasking of Valerie Plame.

After originally saying anyone involved in leaking the name of the covert CIA operative would be fired, Bush told reporters: "If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

The Post calls this "a small, but potentially very significant, distinction." Ya think?

NPR finally caught a whiff of this story this morning. Through their exhaustive sleuthing, they interview usual suspect Victoria Toensing who said, according to the statute over which she supposedly oversaw the drafting, "absolutely, Karl Rove didn't commit a crime." It was the most passive story I've ever heard on this, ending with a summary of events that made the outing of "Joe Wilson's wife," an almost accidental, non-authored event.

Thanks for the illumination, Linda Wertheimer.