Planet Abell

It's not perjury; it's just business. -- "Caught in the Spin Cycle," by Michael Wolff, in Vanity Fair A very smart friend of unrepentant left-wing views shares with me this very fine Vanity Fair article about the Libby trial. Funny thing: it is business. Dirty politics is part of politics and when discovered speaks volumes to voters about the perpetrators in a way no other perspective can. Bring it on and blow it, I say. But there is a cost of doing business, and sometimes it involves a visit to the graybar hotel. Libby's "pardon him now" backers should know better ; there is no rational sanctuary If the purpose of justice is prosecute the right people and appropriately punish a crime then it is a shame that there will be no more indictments and that Robert Novack flourishes, and it would be a shame if Scooter gets more time than Martha Stewart . in portraying Libby as a man wronged unless one believes he was wronged not by Patrick Fitzgerald, but by ...

"I wish we weren't judging Libby. This sucks." -- Libby trial juror Denis Collins, describing the defendant as a "fall guy" I t's a tough job, but somebody has to do it -- whether it is being the point person for a campaign to discredit a political opponent of your boss, or serving on a jury that is judging the wrong person. "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty of four of the five criminal counts against him, charges that he lied to a grand jury and to FBI investigators over how and from whom he learned that former ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. Wilson appeared on the White House radar by writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times recounting his CIA-backed mission to Niger, I wonder if Libby is replaying his grand jury testimony and FBI interviews over and over and asking himself why oh why he just didn't remember at all. Would there have been charges if he didn't remember but also didn't contra...