Why Rove is a Big Deal!

I wrote this enormous piece yesterday regarding a bit of a timeline to the entire controversy and what happened with Plame and Wilson and Rovegate. Then blogger ate it. Dammit! It really was a great piece. In any case, since many of my friends (even the really smart ones who keep up with everything) asked me what the big deal about the story was, I wanted to have a dumbed down version of the entire story. Like I said, blogger ate it. Luckily, Daniel Schorr sumarized things quite nicely on NPR. The big deal is that you have the top political advisor and bestest friend to the President, outing an undercover agent simply for political retribution because her husband called the President out on a lie.

Now this is not the reason the press is pissed off. They are pissed off because they feel Scottie Doo lied to them. And realy that doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

But again, the major question here, and it really is the fear of us who know better, is wether they will stop short of Impeachment. The President himself has played dumb on whether or not he knew who the leaker was. WHo can possibly buy this arguement? Acording to an old Atrios sugestion:

Misprision

With Bush consulting with a lawyer it's a good time to consider what possible legal difficulties he could be confronted with. Now, obviously if as Capitol Hill Blue claims (they aren't a trustworthy source, BTW), one of the grand jury witnesses has claimed Bush had prior knowledge of the leak then he would be in seriously deep doodoo.

But, let's assume for now that isn't the case (or, at least that there isn't actually such a witness). If after the fact he knew who did it, then he would be likely be guilty of being an accessory after the fact for actively covering it up, depending on how his public statements, etc... diverge from the facts.

And, even if not guilty of being an accessory, he could still face charges of "misprision of a felony" - of knowing about it and not coming forward.

So, the point is -- if at any time, before or after, the president knew the identity of the leakers then, to quote Michael Kinsley, "Ha. Ha. Ha."