A lawyer friend of mine once said, "You can't make a cage for snakes. Don't even try." He also said, "A foot high stack of legal documents can't make a person behave honestly if they've made up their mind not to."

He's right.

You can say "the grass is green beneath my feet," and a person may decide to argue with you about it and try to qualify it in as many ways as can be imagined. They can call in expert witnesses, discuss the various meanings of the terms "grass," "green," "beneath," "our" and "feet" and even publish dozens of op-ed pieces in every major media outlet in the country. But what you can always do is look down at your feet and the grass and then look them in the eye and say, "the grass is green beneath my feet." You don't have to meet them halfway, or admit their argument, or question your sanity. You don't even need to call them a liar unless it makes you feel better. All you have to do is insist on the truth repeatedly.

Valerie Plame said she was covert. The CIA said she was covert. At trial, Fitzgerald said she was covert. The jury decided she was covert. An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert", therefore a rational mind concludes that she was covert. She was covert.

Her [Valerie Plame's] unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees.

This is not speculation in the sense that I am proposing some course of action, but ever since this started I have wondered if other American agents were killed, captured or compromised as a result of Plame's outing. I ask myself, with fifty or so employees, how many of them were under cover? How many Iraqi agents working with the Americans were under cover? Was an entire intelligence network, whose purpose was to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Iraq, destroyed because it knew enough to prevent a war with Iraq based on the premise that Iraq had or was acquiring nuclear weapons? Just knowing the little that I know about the nuclear relationships of Pakistan, Iran, China and North Korea, how has the loss of this intelligence network affected the quality of U.S. intelligence relative to other nations in the region and the world? Did Cheney, knowing this and so much more, give the order to out Plame?

It's totally f-d up. And we're still talking about a pardon for Libby? And we're still talking about whether or not Plame was covert?

Why does this keep happening when Democrats could put people like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio up for president? They've all played tough guys and they're much better looking than Fred Thompson. Oh, I forgot one - George Clooney.

You think every woman and half the men in the country wouldn't vote for one of those guys just for the sheer please of seeing them on camera with hobnobbing with Putin and the Pope? Any one of these guys could raise more money at one telethon, dinner or dance party than any Republican candidate to date.

I don't know about Fineman, but both Matthews and Russert are avowed Roman Catholics and, I believe, products of private, Catholic School education (as is Pat Buchanan, Margaret Carlson and numerous other news pundits). I also believe that inherent in the Catholic psyche, is an ingrained desire to be in submission to masculine authority ... i.e., they refer to their local church leader/preacher as "Father." At the very least, I believe that this could begin to explain their fascination with "tough guy" father figures; it's what they know, what they respect and what they want from their "leaders."

Hey, I was raised a Catholic and I totally resem, I mean resent that remark. I'm a topper, buddy. Well, most of the time anyway.

Seriously though, please take a look at Catholicism as it is practiced in other cultures, especially in terms of liberation theology. Catholics are some of the most progressive people out there.

Thanks, Paul.

Meaning, in effect, that conservatives only cared about their own freedom. Liberals cared about everyone's freedom.

Now that is something that should be on the lips of every liberal in the country and every liberal political candidate each and every time they open their mouths.