Quick and Dirty Monday AM Update

I've got my new program starting this morning, so this will be fast...

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas! The blogosphere is a-flutter with antici...PATION (go ahead and source that reference) as Patrick Fitzgerald gears up to bring the smackdown to White House staff.

Apparently it's never been discussed as fact before, but Robert TheHack DID actually flip early on:

A critical early success for Fitzgerald was winning the cooperation of Robert D. Novak, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist who named Plame in a July 2003 story and attributed key information to "two senior administration officials." Legal sources said Novak avoided a fight and quietly helped the special counsel's inquiry, although neither the columnist nor his attorney have said so publicly.

All signs point to Fitzgerald opening his can of whoop-ass this week:

After a 22-month inquiry, the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is expected to announce this week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials, a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy in a case that began as a minor irritant for the president's aides but has grown into a raging conflagration for the White House.

Of course, you'll always have your band of staunch fucktar... I mean, supporters, who are either bucking for some serious favors or are wearing Jackie-O sized rose-colored glasses. First there's FOX News, who thinks they are actually a news network, but are simply a group of faux-celebrities, pushing the "criminalization of politics" talking point (from Think Progress, vid clips available through link):

In other words, they say, the outing of a covert CIA agent in a time of war to punish a whistleblower is just everyday “politics” — nothing out of the ordinary, certainly nothing criminal. In fact, according to conservatives (as articulated by the National Review), the “criminalizing of politics” is actually “the most dangerous fire of this ordeal.”

To spread this talking point across the nation, the right has received a major assist from Fox News. According to a database search, every single television reference to the CIA leak scandal as the “criminalization of politics” in the last 30 days has been on Fox. Even more stunning: on every occassion, the phrase was introduced into the segment by a Fox News anchor or correspondent, never by a guest.

Again, if there's anyone out there that actually goes to FOX for their news, they should throw themselves down a flight of stairs.

Lastly, there's Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-TX, who is spinning the latest talking point about the impending leak issues. According to this New York Times article, Republicans are testing several ways to spin this to help ease the public into the knowledge that they'd MAJORLY FUCKED THE COUNTRY BY VOTING FOR THESE BASTARDS LAST YEAR (insert a firm slap to the back of the head if you were one of the sheeple who did it).

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

President Bush said several weeks ago that Mr. Fitzgerald had handled the case in "a very dignified way," making it more difficult for Republicans to portray him negatively.

But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday. Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.

(BTW, Kay, perjury charges can lead to 5 years in prison, which is a fuckload more than anyone got for the $50 million dress Ken Starr paid for, you little twit.)

Okay, I am off to class - discuss amongst yourselves, and I'll check in later!