In this issue:
1. Neener
Neener, Mr. Poopyhead
2. The Murtha
Escape Hatch
3. Meanwhile,
Iran
4. Quick
Hits
5. New at Reason
Online - PBS Hops on Pop
6. News and
Events
1. Neener Neener, Mr. Poopyhead
Average hard-working stiffs and casual news consumers have no doubt concluded that what passes for journalism about and from Washington, D.C., is a slightly more mature version of I've-got-a-secret. With the revelation that Bob Woodward sat on his info about Valerie Plame for two years, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald must reassess where his investigation goes from here.
At a minimum, Woodward has made clear that there was at least one other conduit of information flowing from the Bush administration and to reporters regarding Plame, Joe Wilson, and the CIA-a conduit that Fitzgerald knew nothing about. For Scooter Libby, this provides the chance to mount a defense based on all the other things the prosecutor didn't know about, which would seem to include the distinction in D.C. between info that everyone knows and info that actually gets reported somewhere.
And if, as has been suggested, former State Department official Richard Armitage was among those talking about Plame's CIA connections, the whole notion of a White House-directed smear campaign against her and her husband becomes exponentially more far-fetched.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10117465/site/newsweek/
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The Bush administration is clearly vexed by the Iraq pull-out plan put forth by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). Murtha cannot be lumped with "Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party," as the White House initially tried to do. For now, the Bush team will try to change the subject and point to the most extreme comments about the Iraq war and hope Murtha will go away.
And that might work. But Murtha really has not suggested anything conceptually that radical: He favors trying to get out of the country sooner and recognizing that an open-ended U.S. presence does not make it more likely that the Iraqis will take charge of their country. For that reason, the real debate over the Bush team's strategy for Iraq and the Middle East is yet to come.
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