I seem to recall having a conversation with your wife once about her feeling that the innocent never go to jail. Granted, she was speaking Lawyer, rather than layman, still, you'd think that if such a presumption of post-verdict guilt were a belief held in your household, it would be extended to the verdict in this case...

Of course, I don't really have a dog in this fight; I didn't follow the case all that closely. Maybe Libby got the Reverse OJ treatment. I don't think so, though...

I'd guess there's a good chance Libby did lie to investigators, and thus is guilty. Technically.

But the whole thing was a travesty from the start. There was no crime. Plame was not a covert agent. And nobody, including all those people who pretended to be shocked and outraged over the dastardly attack on the heroic CIA agent, cared when we learned who actually outed her! Armitage didn't get into any trouble at all.

But my point is not about Libby guilty or innocent, but about a process that tends to run amok. Prosecutors have a lot discretion in who to prosecute, and the thing should have been dropped when it became clear that there was no original crime, and there were no villains at work.

I'm sorry, wasn't he convicted of lying to keep the VP from being indicted? Or at least, lying during an investigation over whether or not the VP ought to have been indicted? And if he was successful in inhibiting the American public from finding out whether or not the VP was engaged in an abuse of power, isn't that reason to convict him and stick him in jail? Do you like my use of questions for the purpose of rhetoric?

Regardless of whether the investigation should have been launched in the first place, the fact remains that when there is an investigation, and you are called to testify under oath, you've gotta tell the truth. That's my problem with Clinton, and that's my problem with Libby.

I haven't followed the trial, so perhaps he's being convicted for mis-remembering - if that's the case, it's a tragedy. But we do not get to pick and choose which investigations to tell the truth to, and which to lie to, based on our assessment of the grounds for the investigation.

I understand the lament that this is a miscarriage of justice, insofar as the investigation should not have been launched in the first place. But that is why, in part, we have a 5th Amendment. It was Libby's perogative to refuse to testify - it was NEVER his perogative to lie.

Andrew,
You are inventing a new crime. "Lying to keep X from being indicted." There's no such animal, and there shouldn't be.

And if you think a moment you will see why.

Ethan and Andrew:

I don't have a dog in this fight, either-- I haven't paid much attention to the circus, especially when it became clear that there was never a crime committed in the first place.

But it has to be said: Did Libby lie under oath? Or is his memory poor?

If he lied, nail his butt to the wall. If oaths are to be taken seriously, there have to be punishments if they're violated.

If his memory is poor, and therefore made his supposedly false testimony in the belief that it was true, why are so many people anxious to see his butt nailed to the wall anyway? Whatever happened to justice?

And imagine the pressure on him to NOT plead the Fifth Amendment if he and his friends couldn't be sure of giving accurate testimony. It would have raised a hue-and-cry over NOTHING (because there was NOTHING), for the natural assumption is that if someone pleads the Fifth, he's hiding something. Never mind that Libby would have only been trying to stay out of trouble over a faulty memory-- the sleepless, eyelid-less wonders of the Fourth Estate would have had a field day trying to rip apart the Administration over nothing at all.

Hale - I think we're on the same page. As I said above, I think that if he's been convicted for mis-remembering, it's a tragedy...but since I didn't follow the trial, and haven't seen anything to the contrary (aside from assertions on blogs or the radio, without support - though I admit I haven't gone looking...), I am happy to trust that the jury weighed the evidence and chose wisely...

I know that pleading the fifth would have raised a firestorm, but thems your choices - you tell the truth, or you plead the fifth. Anything else is just not possible.