XDA

I'm watching my old friend's husband Chris Matthews pronounce the Vice President's name properly. That's all he's getting right. Let me try to clarify.

There's the leak of so called classified information about whom Valerie Plame worked for. That is what got everyone all worked up, the return of the dreaded special prosecutor and a nothing much indictment of Scooter Libby. All of the clips from the President talking about leaks and firing people who committed a crime to leak classified information are about revealing whom Valerie Plame worked for.

The President has all executive power under the Constitution. He can classify information and he can declassify it. When the President (or the Vice President, by statute) declassifies information, it's not a leak. A leak is an unauthorized declassification.

Joe Wilson, who is a liar, (and continued to lie knowingly and repeatedly today on This Week)went to Niger and uncovered strong evidence that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium ore from Niger, but never completed the sale. He reported this attempt to his CIA debriefers. Bush then said in a famous part of the 2003 State of the Union speech that British intelligence said that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa. Wilson then wrote in the New York Times that he found no evidence of any uranium sale and that the White House was lying. To counter Wilson's lies, parts of the classified intelligence report regarding uranium were declassified by the President and Vice President, and aids then asked reporters to report the truth. During that period, Valerie Plame's name and job came up in passing, because, despite Wilson's lying denial, her work at the CIA got Wilson the job in Niger. Excrement then had contact with the bladed air movement device.

To cement that Wilson is a liar, he one time said that he knew that documents about a completed sale in Niger, which were forged, were forgeries when he wrote the NYT opinion piece; however, Wilson never saw those documents and the forgery was not discovered until many months after he said he knew. He has lamely said he was mistaken--mistaken about the main reason for his opinion piece based on documents he actually had no knowledge of? Pull the other one.

I don't know about you, but when I catch someone in a lie, I have trouble believing him or her ever again. If Joe Wilson said the sky was blue, I'd look up and check.

Telling people Valerie Plame worked for the CIA was wrong in a moral sense, but nowhere near an outrage and certainly not a crime. Telling formerly classified things to counter a lying bureaucrat whom the administration had trusted is right, not wrong--not a leak, not criminal, not hypocritical compared with statements about real leaks and not scary at all as the absolute executive power of the President is right there in the Constitution and he gets to exercise it as he chooses. Get used to that, because it has always been going on.

I don't mind valid criticism, but this conflated kerfuffle drives me wild (and Jesuit washout John McLauglin is now repeating the Democrat/MSM talking points). Maddening.

UPDATE: If you don't believe me, because I'm too biased to the right, check out this column in the Washington Post, hardly the bastion of Republican values, which reaches many of the same conclusions about the publicity hound jerk, Joe Wilson.

UPDATE II: Jim Hoft at the Gateway Pundit has a great timeline for la affaire du Plame which focuses on Joe Wilson's lies here.