So rarely do I actually get to mention something before it has been on every daily newsrag on the continent, but here it is. Straight from two other online news sources. (This is as close as I get to a scoop, cut me some slack.)
The National Journal is reporting here that Lewis Libby, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, admitted under oath to a federal grand jury that he was ‘just following orders’ when he disclosed classified information in the summer of 2003.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Of course there is going to be fallout from this, which is good. There is also going to be all sorts of partisan contortions, which is not quite as good. What will be really interesting for me is not what actually ends up happening to the players involved (I am assuming that there will be minor charges against subordinates, a couple of people will resign in disgrace, and nothing will actually change), but how the Tastycrats and Fingerlicans respond. As I noted yesterday, there was actually a round of dissent from within Conservative ranks when Harper basically abandoned his electoral platform within an hour of getting sworn-in. Is it too much to hope for a similar response from the Amercuns? Will legitimate dissent be raised, or will the two parties galvanize and further erode any hope for a reconcilliation of politics and democracy?
Stay tuned, same Joe-time, same Joe-channel.
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