Libby Found Guilty

This ought to generate lots of punditry.

Scooter Libby's going to pay a much steeper price for a much lesser offense than those committed by Bill Clinton or Sandy Berger. He will do so despite the fact that Joe Wilson lied more baldly, more often, and with more detrimental impact than Libby was convicted of doing.

Don't blame the jury, though. They reviewed the testimony, debated comprehensively, and came to a consensus. They saw all the evidence, and were bound by the judge's instructions in evaluating guilt or innocence.

The blame here rests squarely on the shoulders of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor run amok who thought nothing of violating Justice Department guidelines for these sorts of cases, who overstated his case at every turn, who refused to deal with his conflict of interest due to his past adversarial dealings with Libby, and who apparently pursued this case to justify his own exorbitant expenditures. You'll see Fitzgerald's loathsome lack of character confirmed as he soaks up the Left's adulation in months to come. All one needs to know about his devotion to the truth is that he immunized Democrat hack Ari Fleischer without so much as a clue to his role, and let Plame leaker Richard Armitage continue to weasel and lie his way through the proceedings without any penalty whatsoever.

Let's not forget that Libby hardly helped himself. If you're going to rely on your faulty memory and good intentions, you need to have the guts to stand up to cross-examination. Intimating that you're the fall guy for the Administration might play well with a Bush-hating jury, but it also burns serious bridges with your friends and colleagues. Libby no doubt hopes for a pardon, despite being perfectly willing to let his lawyer smear Bush and Cheney.

Some will evince to shed tears of blood for Libby. I won't. Most of our political toadies are no public servants at all; they are drawn to the power, influence, and eventual wealth White House service provides. The downside is that they occasionally get dragged into court on ridiculous, trumped-up, nonsensical charges which simply boil down to bureaucratic infighting. That's the risk they run, and they have no right to complain about the system they created and joined.

We'll hear a lot in the coming days about loyalty and honor, but that will be largely shadow puppetry. There are fewer honorable people in Washington than there were righteous men in Sodom. There are simply people who get caught, and people who get a pass. Democrats make up the latter category, with the occasional media dispensation granted to a Colin Powell or Dick Armitage who serve the Democrat cause despite wearing the other jersey.

As for the Bush Administration, it's over. An administration which cannot protect its own from the knives of its opponents in Congress and in the media can't pass any legislation, promote any policy, nor install any personnel successfully.

Prepare for the Bush impeachment proceedings---the salient lesson Democrats have taken from the Libby trial is that Bush is weak. They will use that weakness to redress what they believe to be the historical black eye of Bill Clinton's impeachment.