The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has the best analysis of yesterday’s news about Karl Rove and the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation. I recommend that you read the entire piece, but here’s the gist of it.
The tragedy of this episode is that a political fight over the war in Iraq was allowed to become a criminal matter. Mr. Wilson spun his false tale in an effort to discredit the war and deny Mr. Bush a second term. The liberal media put partisanship above their own interests in demanding a special counsel probe of “leaksâ€â€“until that probe turned on their own sources. The Attorney General at the time, John Ashcroft, passed the buck to Mr. Comey by recusing himself on flimsy grounds–an act of political and legal abdication.
So what we are left with is a three-year political spectacle that has kept the White House under siege during a war, weakened or pushed out of office some of its most important aides, and made liberal celebrities of Mr. Wilson and his wife. And to what public purpose? A prosecutor with more wisdom than Mr. Fitzgerald would have long ago understood he was injecting himself into a political brawl, closed his case, and left the outcome to the voters (source).
Right on.
