nope, cos he's not a neo-con

No one is interested in the case of the "outed spook" and her "outer" any longer. And that is because we now know who exposed the lady to Robert Novak, and he isn't and never was part of the Cheney White House. He was part of the anti-Cheney State Department, liberal heroes, sort of. That man is Richard Armitage, latterly deputy secretary of state and multi-lateralist par excellence. He has now expressed his soulful contrition for the leak. One thing everybody in Washington knows about Armitage is that he doesn't take another kind of a leak without asking Colin Powell first. So there is now added to this weird case the question of what were Armitage's--and Powell's--motives in this exposure. And they should also be asking about Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at State, and his possible role in this affair. None of these men were especially taken with the Bush administration's war in Iraq. So they are, so to speak, off the hook with the anti-war folk with regard to the leak. The fact is that neither Armitage nor his associates ever told the president who was responsible for the leak. If I were George W. Bush, I'd be ripshit. And, since Armitage two weeks ago unambiguously admitted to being the culprit, should he not now face charges?*

I was in Athens, GA over the weekend, visiting some old friends and the UGA law school (photos hopefully to follow). We crashed some art gallery opening at one point, which appeared to be titled "America On the Brink." On the brink of what, I'm not sure, because the most prominent installation (art isn't hung anymore, apparently, it's installed, like a stereo) was a mound of dirt dotted with lillies, flags, tvs looping clips of Bush administration officials on Fox News (which, oooooh! scary!), and headstone declaring the death of America (on Jan. 20, 2005, snatch). Anyhooters, there was a "painting" on the wall (and I use that word quite loosely, since in form and technique it was, even to my criminally untrained eyes, wholly childish) that looked more like an Abercrombie vintage t-shirt. It had Karl Rove's head on a Pez dispenser, and read "SEZ," with some pithy tag line about leaking classified information. When I saw it, I inadvertently laughed out loud, and when some silk-shirted d-bag turned to glare at me for breaking gallery protocol of not openly mocking featured artwork, I pointed at the painting and said, "Whoops." Not that art has to be factually correct or anything. Just, I mean, jeez guys, pay attention at least.