Dancing, dancing in the streets

Rush Limbaugh thinks librals are gleefully dancing in the streets in the wake of the Libby verdict.

Au contraire, Oxycontinman, I think the response has been, if anything, pretty subdued. And the reason for that is we share the view of the juror who explained their only misgivings in finding him guilty was that Rove wasn't in the dock with Scooter.

The second reason is there really isn't anything to be gleeful apart when it comes to the Bush/Cheney administration. We may give a grim nod as yet another one of the administration's employees is indicted for various offenses, but the corruption and malfeasance is so rife, the damage they've done to this country so great, that even if they dragged the lot of them off through impeachment, the only thing I'll be thinking about is the epic job that will be required to even begin to repair the damage.

The third reason is the sad realization that the Libby verdict, while painful to "the pres" who Cheney himself wrote ordered the Wilson smear to begin with (then crossed off that shorthand, thinking better of it) and to Cheney himself (Libby was "Cheney's Cheney"), the sad truth is no one in this band of thugs really ever got it.

While the White House publicly withheld comment, some Bush advisers expressed outrage, seeing a double standard and citing the documents-smuggling case of former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. Berger. "Scooter didn't do anything," said former Cheney counselor Mary Matalin. "And his personal record and service are impeccable. How do you make sense of a system where a security principal admits to stuffing classified docs in his pants and says, 'I'm sorry,' and a guy who is rebutting a demonstrable partisan liar is going through this madness?"

A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president ordered aides not to comment publicly, disputed the idea that Bush has escaped scrutiny in the past. "I don't buy the conventional wisdom that we haven't had accountability in the past," he said. "Is it different because Democrats are in charge? Of course. . . . [sic] But that's fine, that's a reality that we're prepared to deal with."

Libby will await his inevitable pardon (made more inevitable, surely, because Tony Snow says Bush won't go there), but Fitzgerald admirably put together a methodical unmasking of an administration fueled by deceit, hubris, and vicious self-regard. In that sense, Fitzmas, while satisfying, was nothing to dance about.