A Trial About Nothing

Is anyone even paying attention to the Scooter Libby trial? The media obsession certainly has waned except for the hardcore BDS sufferers on the left. Once Karl Rove escaped indictment, the drive-by crew pretty much gave up interest; that and the credibility of the Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame took major hits. John Podhoretz wonders today is any of this even worth it?

The question is why Fitzgerald is trying to make the case at all. The longer it goes on, the more astoundingly petty this prosecution seems. How any jury member is going to be able to make even minimal sense of what he's hearing is a mystery only slightly larger than the disgrace that this case ever got to this point in the first place.

Now, Scooter Libby is an old friend of mine, and I think he is a great public servant and a patriot, and I would dearly love to see him acquitted. But I'm entirely agnostic on the specific charges brought by Fitzgerald - I don't know whether Libby told the truth to the grand jury.

But neither, in point of fact, does Fitzgerald. And yet he has brought the unlimited resources of the federal government to bear on a single man simply to justify his own pointless and lengthy investigation.

I have no doubt that Fitzgerald gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees a righteous man.

But alas, his eyes deceive him, and his mirror shows nothing but Narcissus.

Meanwhile, the cry rings out to Free the Fitzgerald One.

So why is there a trial? Because there is no penalty for using the threat of imprisonment as a political weapon against conservatives. Ask Tom DeLay or Rush Limbaugh.

If Libby were a Democrat, we would know the sexual proclivities of everyone in Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's office, Judith Miller would be portrayed as a "stalker," Tim Russert's cat would be dead, and the public would know about every toupee at MSNBC.

Republicans don't have to kill cats to bestir themselves to defend their own from rank partisan persecution. But it never happens.

People who attack conservatives never have to worry about their own dirty laundry coming out. All they have to worry about is whether People magazine will use a good picture of them in its "Sexiest Man Alive" issue.

When Secret Service officers innocently told Monica she couldn't see Clinton because Eleanor Mondale was "visiting" the president, Bill Clinton immediately threatened to fire the officers responsible. (They say Clinton was so mad it took him an extra couple of minutes to "finish off" in the sink.)