I sloshed through Bobby Novak's article yesterday, and according to him this is what the world found out:
The Libby trial uncovered no plot hatched in the White House. The worst news Tuesday for firebrand Democrats was that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going back to his "day job" (as U.S. attorney in Chicago). With no underlying crime even claimed, the only question was whether Libby had consciously and purposefully lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned of Mrs. Wilson's identity.
So were there any mistakes, Mr. Novak?
George W. Bush lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or Mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political. It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, and not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009.
A call for a pardon. Didn't see that coming. Too bad the people aren't calling Novak's shit "sugar" anymore.
So how did the people react?
That this guy Novak continues to get his columns published in this paper is a complete joke. Novak should have long ago been ditched and any reasonable journalist and paper should turn their back on him. Not only has his role as a partisan hack totally overtaken any intellectual heft he used to carry, he now uses his space and the Post inexplicably gives him the room to do it to offer up lame excuses for his behavior. At the end of the day the issue is Libby lied to a grand jury, why it was called, who the prosecutor was, and what role the great sleuth Bob Novak played in it is irrelevant. Let law and order carry the day. Libby broke the law and now he gets to do the time.
Novak is a cancer on our society. He and his kind would, and will, destroy this country if left unchecked.
Mr. Novak, you should be in jail. Washington Post, you continue to bring shame upon your paper by continuing to allow this traitor to justify himself in your pages. Mr. Libby is the one liar that got prosecuted. If Mr. Fitzgerald had been able to ferret out all the lies that had been told to the Grand Jury, Mr. Libby would not have been the only one in the dock.
Unbelievable ... Novak has set a new low for hypocrisy. He trumpets the fact that there was no underlying crime supposedly, maintaining again that Plame was not undercover but then he goes on to show why the underlying crime couldnt be prosecuted ... -- In fact, her being classified ... did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker ... under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas -- UNREAL ... none of this excuses playing fast and loose with a covert agents identity for mere political payback. Once again, Novak shows why he has no creditability left!
(That was just Page One...)
Mr. Novak, I am a Republican. The fact that you were ASKED not to publish her name by the CIA representative--and he called you back to emphasize that---but did it anyway, makes you a partisan traitor, and an embarassment to the Republican Party. All the other gobbledegook in your article is noise. You CHOSE to do what you did, while most of the other journalists had the integrity, even if leaked to, not to parade her name and her CIA FRONT COMPANY, in national newspapers. You SHAME patriotism you SHAME ethical journalism you SHAME your fellow Republicans. Go away, please. Ask Cheney to send you somewhere on a junket. Stay out of the public arena until this next election is over every word you utter brings the Republican Party closer to a landslide loss in 2008. JUST GO AWAY.
Dont blame George W. Bush for losing control. Hes had plenty other truly serious issues to attend to involving the safety of this nation. You and your pompous media-comrades helped exacerbate this travesty of justice! Your months and years of silence when you KNEW the truth are unforgivable. It was your newspaper column that stirred up this hornets nest. You in the media seem entertained by throwing grenades only to view the turmoil. Early on when you knew the wrong people were being fingered you could have stepped up! You could have used those same media resources to re-direct the investagation toward the TRUTH. That would have required the courage you speak of, but do not exhibit. Shame on you!
More political lies. You are nothing but a propaganda machine for the Republicans, and you demonstrate a reckless disregard for the truth. Check with Rockefeller about the damage done to our intelligence services. You, too, outed Valerie Plame and should be prosecuted. Ms. Plames status is not even debatable. Repeated attempts to minimize the actions of Bush and Cheney are falling on deaf ears. Retire.
And the Washington Post bemoans the fighting and division in America. Allowing Bob Novak--of all people--prime column space right after the verdict is a slap in the face. By the way, a poll on the CSPAN website shows that almost NINETY percent of the people want congess to investigate Cheney. This will go a long way to counter a possible Libby pardon. They are all scumbags, and we work our asses off to pay their salaries.
Thanks for that candid, non-partisan view on the Libby trial. Now excuse me while I go throw up.
Currently, there are 41 pages of comments. I have come across a few that attack some of the comments above (like "Libby is innocent," or "what about Sandy Berger?" or the-ever-popular "this is Clinton's fault!"), but this is the strongest praise for Novak I could find...
I give the Post lots of credit for carrying Novak and Will as columnists. The problem is that most liberals cant understand the depth of the issues unless its written in crayon. Therefore, the reasoned writing of these two gentlemen falls on deaf ears. This whole Libby case was a big nothing- a waste, and will be forgotten soon. If the President has half the gonads of Ann Coulter, he will pardon Libby, and render this folly of justice into oblivion. The Liberals will continue their hatred, making Coulter seem tame in comparison. But then again, Liberals and hatred seem synonymous.
...but since he's an Ann Coulter-lover we can assume that he's not exactly unbiased. And no, the irony of an Ann Coulter-lover saying "liberals and hatred seem synonymous" is not lost on me.