Conason raises an excellent point by comparing Kenneth Starr's willingness to leak information with the opacity of Fitzgerald's office. This difference betrays the motives of the pundits who criticize the current inquiry. The fact is that nobody outside of the grand jury knows what indictments it will return. To call Fitzgerald a runaway prosecutor without any information from inside the jury room shows that these "journalists" are simply engaging in advance damage control as they attempt to read the tea leaves by questioning sources close to the witnesses who have already testified.

It is easy enough to predict a perjury or obstruction charge when you compare the reports of Rove's testimony and Libbey's testimony with the reports of Miller's and Cooper's testimonies. However, inside the offices of Fitzgerald and the grand jury is where the actual deliberations are proceeding.

By discounting the credibility of the Special Counsel before any indictments are returned, without even any sources inside the Special Counsel's office, these pundits are playing the worst kind of spin game. They are attacking the credibility of Fitzgerald just in case any indictments are returned.

What if Prosecutor Fitzgerald concludes his investigation with no report and no indictments?

Since Fitzgerald been cast as incorruptible and unerringly just by nearly everyone on the left in America, such an anticlimax would appear to vindicate all that is Bush-ish, and would be a calamity for dissent, perhaps also touching off another avalanche of hubristic high crimes in the Administration. Mr. Fitzgerald is not obliged to utter a single word, ever, in defense or explanation if that is what he decides to do. We all know how good he is at keeping his mouth shut.

Let's pass over the possibility that he might actually proclaim the vindication of Rove and Co. and call for an end to any further questions.

While we're at it, whether Harriet Miers is confirmed or not, the reality is that the U.S. will probably have a far-right-wing Supreme Court for a very long time. Either Miers will squeak through, or Bush will find another "brilliant" and implacable fascist like Scalia or Roberts, who will be approved without question.

Even supposing that the religiously pure and now stone conservative Miers at one time displayed "liberal tendencies" that could theoretically be reawakened, isn't it probable that once out of her current job, she would transfer her neurotic loyalty from Bush to the coldly seductive Roberts or the grimly authoritarian Scalia? We can only hope that both of them would be disgusted by her fawning, driving her in tears into the arms of Justice Stevens.

Nowhere on what passes for the left have I seen any commentary that acknowledges the near-certainty of the coming right-wing Court or suggests a strategy for dealing with it. And yet we must deal with this, as we must with errors of justice in favor of the oligarchs, which will inevitably come even if Fitzgerald does indict.

Ah, yes, if my Watergate memory serves, it's time for the wise old pundits to begin the litany:

The country has had enough trauma - pursuing this will only tear us apart.

Washington has more important things to spend time on - not a minor incident

These things happen all the time in D.C. - let's not criminalize politics.

It was wrong, but certainly not worthy of all the attention given to it.

Norman Ornstein (who I usually like) thinks the ship is sinking and has to saved.

In truth, insular, official Washington is sinking - and my response is, "Say buh-bye." With luck it will take them another thirty years to get this rotten again.

do i remember this correctly--didn't the so-called whitewater investigation devolve into photos of President Clinton's penis called in as evidence of something or other? i don't remember anyone on the right jumping up and saying, 'hey, let's end the criminalization of sex.' i felt we had reached a new low, as a nation, at that point. i do remember rush limbaugh cackling with joy every day about the 'ipotus'--the 'impeached president of the united states.' does anyone have transcripts of some of those old shows? might be interesting to revisit them now.