What Smart People are Saying about Valerie Plame If you were living your life, instead of cruising blogs over the past few days, you may have missed some posts on the Plame thing by some of the better informed left-of-center-types.
First, Mark Kleiman tears into the "it's all bogus" argument pushed by many, including Glenn Reynolds. "The 'bogus scandal' theory bites the dust" is a good take-down of that line of thinking.
Since the only reason to believe the Reynolds/Rasmussen theory is the assumption that the case is bogus, and since the theory turns out to contradict fact, law, and logic at multiple points, perhaps it would be well to drop the assumption, rather than maintaining the theory and therefore swallowing the contradictions.
[Karl Popper points out that the readiness to abandon ideas that don't fit the facts is a survival trait. "We make our theories die in our stead." (Did Popper intend the apparent allusion to the Christian docrtine of Redemption?)]
Rejecting the "bogus scandal" theory would put one in agreement with the President of the United States (with his words, that is, rather than his actions) in thinking that that unmasking Valerie Plame was both "very serious" and "a criminal act."
A Washington Post article from today's edition, Justice Could Decide Leak Was Not a Crime, opens with this:
The Justice Department investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity could conclude that administration officials disclosed the woman's name and occupation to the media but still committed no crime because they did not know she was an undercover operative, legal experts said this week.
"It could be embarrassing but not illegal," said Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when Congress passed the law protecting the identities of undercover agents.
is given needed context (the quoted "legal experts" aren't exactly impartial) by both Josh Marshall ("Mike, Mike, Mike") and the Decembrist ("Plame: The Defense Makes Its Opening Statement"). These two posts don't quite cover the same ground, so be sure to read both.
7:06:06 AM 
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