I can remember a time when the White House was terrified of the Washington Post. Now, the reporters at the Post grovel at the back door of the White House begging for scraps.

That's the beauty of checks-and-balances, with all the inherent accountability necessary for good government. When there's delayed (or non-existent) accountability, the rotten excesses of unfettered power build up and poison government. Lancing the boil lets out that poison, and it AIN'T pretty -- but it's necessary.

Not to mention that jaw dropping barrage of Rovian dreck about the Libby case that appears on the editorial page today.

i had many of the same thoughts while reading baker's article this morning.

in fact, i had to do a double take when he compared the libby scandal to lewinsky.

thank you for listing out the republican investigations. it will come in handy, i suspect.

So let's be sure to show all the restraint, and even a bit more, than the other side did, when they were in power.

That should do it.

including the dems approved the war. No one was mislead. Libby's trial had nothing to do with that.

It's just that simple.

there's even a slant in his online chat today about the case:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/03/05/DI2007030500376.html

Bush will pardon Libby. Bush is so far gone now, his legacy a guaranteed black eye, what has he got to lose but the love of his hard-core supporters who will be overjoyed at the pardon?

...(and shame on anyone who did vote for that resolution, because plenty of voices were out there proclaiming the truth about Iraq), but how does that translate to "no one was mislead"? It's patently obvious that we WERE mislead into a war of choice, one that Bush and friends had planned right from the start of his presidency.

The proof?

Time magazine reported that in March 2002 – a full year before the invasion – Bush outlined his real thinking to three U.S. senators, 'Fuck Saddam,' Bush said. 'We’re taking him out.'"

When the GOP "overplayed the accountability hand," it won the White House and control of Congress. But it would be dangerous if the Dems did because ... um, oh yeah, because we can't stand them.

Baker's line of reasoning, combined with Fred Hiatt's unhinged take, makes me believe this case is shaking Beltway reporters as deeply as the WH. The case was as damning to way they do business as it was to the VP's office.

Watching the administration come under indictment over the war threatens to tar them too for their lazy, credulous reporting. They're trying to fight back with ham-handed bud-nipping, but they're too late; the bud has bloomed and spores are spreading all across the meadow. Now the truth is sprouting and choking out all the lies and misinformation -- and those who passed it all along so uncritically.

The danger in accountability is to Baker and Hiatt and all the other stenos whose M.O. is becoming unsustainable. {Cue the next big newpaper layoff story...}

Yes, we were mislead by Saddam. Remember him? The crazy guy who in the face of international force and UN sanctions stood firm?

You people will not get to rewrite history.

Yes, we remember Sadam -- the "crazy guy" that these people sucked up to back in the days when he was useful to them. They rushed him into a hangman's noose precisely in order to prevent history from being written.

The war in Iraq is not the most urgent issue confronting the country. With apologies to Joe, who is an oft-spotted troll on Salon comment boards, the most urgent issue confronting this country is the Constitutional crisis that Democrats keep trying to pretend isn't happening. They must follow the Congress of the Watergate era, or choose the path taken by the Congress in the Iran-Contra era. One did its Constitutional duty, the other did not. If this Congress takes the latter course, we are following Rome down the path where Republican government degenerates into Empire.

Oh, and Joe, since you believe no lies were told, I assume you would welcome a wide-ranging investigation into what the President and VP knew and when they knew it -- after all, it would undoubtedly find them innocent....

Dontcha just love it, when papers like the Washington Post, and reporters like Peter Baker, pontificate about how the Democrats, should hey, totally, take it easy on investigating Bush & Co. cause they might overdo it? If I remember correctly, wasn't it Peter Baker and his "Co." who bought the WH line on WMDs hook, line and sinker, failing to investigate the WH claims of imminent danger, and could be sorta described as co-enablers to getting us into Iraq in the first place? And wasn't it MSM papers like Peter Baker's Co. that came out in the Libby trial as co-enablers on outing the Wilsons, since the WH Co. knew just whom to call to get its message out? And have we heard any mea culpas from those papers about their part in that outing or Baker's Co. about how they let the WMDs just slip under their radar, or how they are doing things differently, because isn't it the same Peter Baker, who just today, used that DARN "anonymous" WH spokesman, to lend cred. to his lecture to the Dems?

came, for once, in the form of the firings of army generals for sloppy oversight, or perhaps indifference, to returning wounded vets. The normal pro-forma is for Bush to give medals of freedom to these knuckleheads but in this case shrub "thought" better of it considering the BS he has slung since he lied us into this war about how traitorous the Dems are/were/will be for not "supporting the troops". Excuse him while he changes feet, and with any luck a V.P.

Perhaps Cheney would be better at selling shoes:

"Hey lady, put your @&**#42%#%$% foot into this god damned shoe or I'll...where the hell is that hunting rifle for christ's sake..."