"Judge Samuel Alito" = JUST MALE DIALOGUE

Lot of fuss today.

Granted, his record certainly looks potentially worrisome to women, immigrants, minorities, people with disabilities, people with AIDS, plus other sick people and folks planning to have children.

This last — a hostility to the Family and Medical Leave Act — is
particularly excellent for pregnant women: with Alito as a justice, you
lose whether you have the child or not.

So whatever you do, remember: sex is very bad.

But that all said, admirers of strip-searches of 10-year-old girls, free trade in machine guns, suspiciously avoiding military service, and financial conflicts of interest should be plenty happy.

Just came from the L.A. Zoo.

It’s the time of year when love is in the air for young teenage pudus. 
I wasn’t actually expecting a show, but today, for the first time, I have seen the results with my own eyes. 
From about four feet away.

This was absolutely adorable.

This was also perhaps the single most physically awkward maneuver I
have ever seen attempted.  Imagine trying to stack two Vienna sausages on top of
each other so that they don’t just immediately roll apart. 
Now imagine trying this when your brain is flushed with hormones and you have an IQ of about ten.  Then add four big confused eyes and eight flailing limbs.  Repeat.

There is a good reason that pudus are not stacked on shelves at IKEA.  They
are not made to assemble easily.  I don’t think even an Allen
wrench would help.

I would show you.  I took a few pictures when I could stop laughing long enough to hold the camera still.  But trust me: there are some things much better left to the imagination.

No matter how much awkwardness you ever went through as a teenager…
rest assured, there are entire species who seem to have things much worse.

I might be wrong, but I don’t think Fitzgerald is anywhere near done.

First, keep in mind that what’s already in this one indictment is not
everything Fitzgerald has.  It’s only what Fitzgerald needs to make his
case against Libby. 

But look at what’s here, just in this document: as part of establishing
the case that Libby lied when he claimed to have learned about Plame
from reporters, Cheney himself is tagged:

This a) puts Cheney squarely in the loop — so even if he’s never
implicated legally, common sense tells us he knew damn well — and b)
as Josh Marshall points out,
shows that Plame worked in Operations (the running-spies-around
section) at the CIA.  They had to know she was undercover, although
that knowledge might have been hard to prove in court.

In further demonstrating that Libby’s blame-the-media story was false,
similarly points out clearly, even here, that he was talking with
numerous other people in the White House about Valerie Plame’s
employment status.

We find an unnamed "Under Secretary of State" who:

This same passage indicates that the "Under Secretary" knew exactly why
Libby was interested — the Niger/yellowcake thing — and even provided
him with specific and ongoing research into Joe Wilson.

There’s also:

"Official A" sure looks to me like Rove.  And by the way, Rove’s cover
story — just like Libby’s — was that he heard the whole thing from
reporters.  We all know how well that held up.

There’s:

That’s gotta be Catherine Martin, currently a Deputy Assistant to
Bush.  And so on.  Fitzgerald seems intent on following this anywhere
it goes, gathering something resembling a full story.

Fitzgerald didn’t prosecute under the IIPA or the Espionage Act for
good reasons that he laid out; he couldn’t get iron proof of motivation, guilty intent, etc.

But if there’s any evidence that any of these people
knew how this information would be used, further felony charges still seem possible.

So will Libby plead out?  Consider this:

This was before the Op-Ed by Wilson.  This was before
Libby talked with Judy Miller.  And it shows that Libby — and probably
a bunch of other people — knew damn well how sensitive the information
about Plame was, and exactly what game was being played here.

Perjury?  Libby appears to have been nailed to the wall here.  (Libby’s
statement is hardline about innocence, but his attempt at
self-exoneration amounts just to "hey, I just didn’t remember that
dozen-plus contacts over the course of several weeks.")

I assume Libby is not interested in losing the next decade of his life
after a show trial that will drag all of his political allies through
the mud anyway.

Fitzgerald seems intent on showing "substantial interference with the
administration of justice," so federal sentencing guidelines get a little
bit extra harsh.

On the other hand, if Libby cops a plea, he’s probably just gonna get a few months.  Slap on the wrist.

Libby may just be posturing now to get the best plea bargain possible.

I don’t know anymore than you do, of course.

But
Fitzgerald has done RICO cases.

I suspect a few more press conferences might still be coming.  If I had to guess, I think it’s gonna be much worse on Rove when the time comes.

I’m already hearing this spin, over and over, from talking heads across the dial: because there’s no indictment on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, obviously no crimes fitting those statutes were committed.

Rubbish.

Good prosecutors are sometimes careful to prosecute only slam-dunk charges, and Patrick Fitzgerald is one of the best; that doesn’t mean other crimes weren’t committed.

The GOP spin equates to claiming that just because Al Capone was only nailed on tax evasion, therefore he was never a mob boss, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre simply never happened.

PS — Fox anchor Bill Hemmer has also already repeated the absolute falsehood that
sending Joe Wilson to Niger was his wife’s idea.  But that’s Fox. 

"Scotter Libby" = "I COBBLE STORY"

Couldn’t resist.  OK.  Reading now.