Liberal Talk Radio

Yesterday, I innocently asked why I should care about this whole Fitzmas business. Today, not one Times columnist but two Times columnists tell me why I shouldn’t care. Thank you for your prompt reply, Gentlemen — this new Times Select shiznit might be worth it!First John Tierney asks, “And Your Point Is?” A Zagatified version to follow:

Tierney, “trying to figure out the point of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation,” finds no help from Howard Dean, who lamely suggests that this is about the administration lying about WMD. Yes, Tierney contrarily notes, “they were eager to embrace any bit of evidence for weapons there, but they had plenty of company in their suspicions, including Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton.” So after years of getting beat up, the CIA fought back at its critics using Wilson while the White House “struck back by leaking its side of the story and disparaging Wilson - some of whose claims were indeed found to be false by a subsequent Senate investigation.”What’s more, Tierney says, “It now looks as if the White House leakers were accurate in their warnings to reporters to be leery of Wilson’s story.” Tierney adds that you can argue that the leakers should be fired for “carelessness” (by revealing Plame’s CIA status) or “stupidity” (because of Libby’s “clunky” Aspen letter to Judith Miller), “but no one deserves to go to jail for leaking information to reporters without criminal intent.” Tierney sums it up: “The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong.”

OK, you say, but that’s that contrarian c********r — give me another less-contrarian c********r! But with apologies to those Deadwood c********rs, we don’t have just one c********r — we’ve got two c********rs, including that Nicholas Kristof c********r:

Before dragging any Bush administration officials off to jail, we should pause and take a long, deep breath.In the 1990’s, we saw the harm that special prosecutors can do: they become obsessive, pouncing on the picayune, distracting from governing and frustrating justice more than serving it. That was true particularly of Kenneth Starr’s fanatical pursuit of Bill Clinton and of the even more appalling 10-year investigation into inconsequential lies by Henry Cisneros, the former housing secretary.Special prosecutors always seem to morph into Inspector Javert, the Victor Hugo character whose vision of justice is both mindless and merciless. We don’t know what evidence has been uncovered by Patrick Fitzgerald, but we should be uneasy that he is said to be mulling indictments that aren’t based on his prime mandate, investigation of possible breaches of the 1982 law prohibiting officials from revealing the names of spies.Instead, Mr. Fitzgerald is rumored to be considering mushier kinds of indictments, for perjury, obstruction of justice or revealing classified information. Sure, flat-out perjury must be punished. But if the evidence is more equivocal, then indictments would mark just the kind of overzealous breach of prosecutorial discretion that was a disgrace when Democrats were targeted.And it would be just as disgraceful if Republicans are the targets.

Let’s Zagat, shall we?

Government officials using the media is “sleazy and outrageous,” Kristof writes, “But a crime?”You should also know that after writing about Wilson in 2003, Kristof got a call from another White House official, who “never said anything inappropriate or mentioned Mr. or Mrs. Wilson.” Kristof guesses that these folks “decided to take the offensive” but that the leak of Plame’s name “may well have been negligence rather than vengeance.” He also wonders whether the CIA link was made “to make her husband’s trip look like a nepotistic junket.” “That was appalling,” he writes, “but there’s also no need to exaggerate it” since the CIA believed that Plame’s identity may have been compromised as early as 1994.In the end, the “whispering campaign” “amounts to back-stabbing politics, but not to obvious criminality.” What’s more, “if indictments are issued for White House officials on vague charges of revealing classified information, that will have a chilling effect on the reporting of national security issues.” And the “ultimate irony would come if we ended up strengthening the Bush administration’s ability to operate in secret.”

And if this all leads to Cheney, and if he leaves, and if Condi replaces him and if she runs again for VP under John McCain, then this all plays out Exactly As Karl Planned (EAKP) . . . and it might be brilliant — brilliant! — in the end.So I ask you — if that happens, will that s****y little perjury charge be worth it?UPDATE: This c********r (I know him and he’s smart as s**t) is arguing that perjury and obstruction of justice are still serious crimes. True. Like I said, if you had any doubts about that, ask Lil’ Kim. But in a situation where folks are making out like it’s the undoing of a Presidency or an indictment of the Iraq War or even a refutation of neoconservative ideology, hanging these guys on perjury is lame.But you know, so was Martha Stewart, if you think about it. And President Clinton. Any situation where you move away from the main crime into something peripheral is unsatisfying. It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Tax evasion?! Come on, be a man! It’s racketeering, baby! Or it’s like some pig smelling weed in the car, not being able to prove s**t and letting you walk with a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. That’s lame. Because seatbelts are lame. They are. I said it. Bah!