Below The Beltway

As a piece of literature, history, and autobiography, Scott McClellan’s media attention grabbing book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception isn’t great or even good. As someone who loves reading books, I found myself skipping over entire chapters with ease to get to the part that mattered simply because [...]

An extended interview on this morning’s Today Show:
The former Bush administration pitchman making explosive election-year charges about how the White House handled the Valerie Plame case and built the case for invading Iraq said Thursday that he went to Washington to change it and became “disillusioned” when he realized he was just a pawn in [...]

A Federal Judge has dismissed the lawsuit that Valerie Plame and her husband filed against several members of the Bush Administration:
A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Cheney and top administration officials over the disclosure of Plame’s name and covert status to [...]

Earlier today, a Federal Appeals Court denied Scooter Libby’s bid to stay out of jail while his appeal was pending (a request that, even in nonviolent cases, is frequently not granted), but at the end of the day Libby received word that he won’t have to spend a day in jail no matter how the [...]

Earlier this afternoon Scooter Libby, Vice-President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff was found guilty on four of the five counts he had been charged with:
A federal jury today convicted I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of lying about his role in the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity, finding the vice president’s former chief of staff [...]

Just when you might have thought that Robert Novak’s revelations about his involvement in the Valerie Plame matter would bring this ridiculous saga to an end, things go from ridiculous to down right stupid:
WASHINGTON — The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential [...]

Columnist Robert Novak has published a column revealing in detail his role in the Valerie Plame case:
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he identified three confidential administration sources during testimony in the CIA leak investigation, saying he did so because they had granted him legal waivers to testify and [...]