by Matt Barr

Man overboard!

The tendentious John Dean plumbs new depths writing about the Plame case (there's still a Plame case?):

Could the Supreme Court Become Complicit In Bush Administration Misdeeds?

Though few believe the Supreme Court will rule for the reporters, as Hoyle note [sic], the High Court might place the case "on its docket, which conceivably could push the resolution into 2006." It would take only four Justices' votes to do so.

If the Court declines to grant review, Special Counsel Fitzgerald can go ahead and force Cooper and Miller to testify, or face jail. But if it takes the case - and further delays it - the Special Counsel can do nothing.

For this reason, a Court decision to docket the case should raise deep suspicions. This, after all, is the Court that installed Bush and Cheney in the White House with its dubious Bush v. Gore ruling. Delaying this case until the backside of Bush's second term could give the White House a pass through the mid-term elections as well.

Such delay, then, would suggest complicity by the conservative bloc (those most likely to take the case) of the Court in Administration crimes. Imagine, by comparison, if conservatives on the Court had managed to delay the Court's ruling forcing Richard Nixon to turn over his tapes to the Watergate Special Prosecutor until after the 1974 mid-term elections. That would not only have helped Republicans in the mid-term elections, it would also have enabled Nixon to survive an impeachment conviction -- for there was no smoking gun until the Court acted.

The Plame leak is a very serious one. It is an especially nasty case of revenge for truth-telling: To go after Wilson's wife, for his Op Ed, is dirty business indeed. Even more important, for Valerie Plame (and possibly others who covertly associated with her abroad, and were outed when she was outed) this leak could be life-threatening.

It is way past time to get to the bottom of the Plame leak. It deserves both the pitiless light of publicity, and the laser focus of prosecution. One can only hope that the paperback edition of Joe Wilson's book, with its new material, will create more public pressure to uncover the truth.

Here's how this farm accident blossoms from Dean's conviction that Bush administration thugs are up to no good:

1. Hoyle note [sic] that the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case could push its resolution "into 2006." The midterm elections are scheduled for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, close to the end of 2006. Yet in DeanWorld this dilatory tactic by the conservative bloc of the Court is designed to spare Republicans from consequences during the November, 2006 elections.

2. There is no four-Justice "conservative bloc" on the Court.

3. Everyone knows Plame's non-outing wasn't a crime now, now that reporters could get in trouble.

4. By definition, it is impossible to "survive" an impeachment conviction.

5. U.S. v. Nixon was 8-0. There was more concern over the appearance of unanimity 30 years ago, but it's not as though the "conservatives on the Court" back then were doing everything they could to keep Nixon out of trouble -- which would have included, you'd think, voting in his favor.

6. Clearing all the pedantry away, examine the premise of this miserable little section. The Court may or may not agree to hear the journalist privilege case. Its reasons for taking it up are more likely to include that it believes an important question of law needs to be settled than "complicity" in "crimes." If it does grant cert, the four (or more) Justices who vote to do so won't be revealed. Dean knows this, but casts aspersions on the Court by suggesting that if it agrees to hear review, it's "suspicious" and probably criminal.

Asinine.

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