Scooter Libby: Poor poor pitiful me

(GWBush & his scooter)

Poor Scooter. Maybe he can use the Paris excuse to cut down his jail time. But the often wankerific Orange County Register drifts toward Wingerville with this editorial:

For the crimes of which he was convicted in March, however, it is outrageous that he has been sentenced to 30 months in jail and a fine of $250,000.

We stand behind our position when Mr. Libby was charged and standing trial – that it was an abuse of prosecutorial discretion to charge him with perjury and obstructing justice.

But here's the winner in today's Yellow Journalism contest:

To recap: Robert Novak in summer 2003 published the fact that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. Whether she was an undercover agent, which could have made a knowing revelation of her identity a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, has still not been revealed officially, though it seems to have been informally confirmed that at least she was covert at some time or another.

Kids, it's one thing to be ideologically pure, and another entirely to fall into Wonderland. Obviously the Register's writers don't bother to read:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Marcy Wheeler, aka emptywheel, blogger extraordinaire from The Next Hurrah & FireDogLake, posts links to the actual documents referenced above at The Next Hurrah (note: pdf's):

here is the Govt memo on sentencing and related exhibits. You'll notice they say, about 10 different times, that Plame was covert covert covert covert covert.

As is so often the case, it's all about The Rule Of Law™, except when it isn't. From Paul Waldman at TomPaine.com:

We’re angry that when some pompous fool who less than a decade ago demanded that Bill Clinton be impeached in order to demonstrate our fealty to the “rule of law” comes on television to explain how I. Scooter Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice mean nothing and he must immediately be pardoned, Wolf Blitzer doesn’t say, “Get out of this studio, you contemptible hypocrite, and don’t ever come back.”

Indeed.