The New Domino Theory

I know this is not a GoTo blog for getting the Breaking News, but I was certainly not AWOL. I timed my activities today carefully. I checked the Very Important Blogs in the morning, as well as Fitzgerald's website - still nothing. I went to set up the lab.

Once I got there I got on the computer and checked out the Very Important Blogs - still nothing. Fitz website - nothing. A minute later: Fitz website...a-ha! There it is - the indictment and the press release. I could have posted, but, as I stated above, this is not a GoTo blog for Breaking News - nobody would get their news from me first. Anyway, I don't like posting away from home - all that logging in and logging out and stuff.

Then I set up the lab for tomorrow and went to lunch to a place that I knew would have CNN on a TV in the corner and I made my menu choice in such a way that I could get into my car at exactly 2:15pm. I listened to the press conference on NPR in the car and, after arriving home, on CNN.

Since then, I checked the Very Important Blogs for first reactions. Law-bloggers are the best. Firedoglake has been so much on top of all this, it is the first GoTo blog on the topic. Publius promises more later. On the political side of the blogosphere, Billmon, Digby and Josh Marshall are on fire. Pick your own favourite choices where to go.

My first impressions: this is just a beginning. Fitzgerald said what he could say. He ably countered all of the Wingnut talking points, e.g., about his partisanship. His almost-angry (is this guy capable of being angry?) tirade about seriousness of perjury and lying should shut up anyone who tries to play that gambit. Anyway, if anyone tries that on you, Google, Google News and Google Blogsearch are your friends. Type in "1998 Clinton perjury" and you will be served dozens if not hundreds of quotes by prominent Republicans about the seriousness of the crime.

The Indictment, which I only skimmed so far, appears really seriously damning, not just for Libby - he's guilty as can be and will have a second career as an anthropologist studying the prison culture by being deeply immersed in it for many years - but a number of others.

Libby's already facing 30 years in jail for lying - he'll be nuts to lie any more. And sooner or later he will understand that he's been made a fall guy and that his friends are not his friends any more. He does not work with them or for them any more and they have no interest in helping him at all. He either saves them or saves his own skin - guess which of the two options a Republican will choose.

A lot of dirt is going to come up during trial (some of it already in the text of the Indictement - go to other bloggers for careful parsing of every word) and more heads will roll next year, just in time for mid-term elections. There is a reason why Fitzgerald just doubled his office space....