The Plame Game (update)

I watched the Fitzgerald news conference on Friday. He speaks well and without evasiveness. We could do with more of this sort of talk in Washington. While Republicans like Kaye Bailey Hutchinson were busy claiming that perjury isn't a real crime ( a belief they've all flip-flopped on since the time of Monica Lewinsky), Fitzgerald made a simple case in favor. It's important to find the truth in the Plame affair as a matter of national security. Classified information leaked, and we need to find out how that happened. Anyone not telling the truth about these events is putting their own interests above our national security. After a while, it was funny to watch the reporters try to come up with yet another way to get Fitzgerald to tell them information they had already heard him say he couldn't tell them.

A blog that I've lost track of pointed out that most palatable defense that administration official have now in the Plame case is that they were careless with classified information. If they try to claim they weren't careless, they leave themselves open to the charge of having done it purposefully. Yet another example of how Bush's people aren't the "grownups" they claimed to be when arriving on the scene.