I Praise Something In the New York Times... and The World Doesn't End

I rarely, if ever, praise the left-wing dishrag. But John Tierney's efforts in Saturday's column on the Plame affair are worthy of acclaim...

The closest parallel is the moment in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" when members of a mob eager to burn a witch are asked by the wise Sir Bedevere how they know she's a witch.

"Well, she turned me into a newt," the villager played by John Cleese says.

"A newt?" Sir Bedevere asks, looking puzzled.

"I got better," he explains.

"Burn her anyway!" another villager shouts.

That's what has happened since this scandal began so promisingly two summers ago. At first it looked like an outrageous crime harming innocent victims: a brave whistle-blower was smeared by a vicious White House politico who committed a felony by exposing the whistle-blower's wife as an undercover officer, endangering her and her contacts in the field.

But if you consider the facts today, you may feel like Sir Bedevere. Where's the newt? What did the witch actually do?

...For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

More people are coming to this conclusion. Over at the Belgravia Dispatch, Gregory Djerejian takes Josh Marshall and the rest of the portside bloggers to task for their willfully sloppy reporting in search of a scandal. John Podesta, Clinton's former White House Chief of Staff, now claims that the scandal is about the "war in Iraq" and not, apparently, a criminal matter (hat tip: Instapundit). I'm glad no one's debated the war in Iraq before. I think the Democrats who want to debate the war in Iraq are missing the tack here --debate the current conduct of the war, rather than the decision to go to war. This guy might have the right idea -- the Wilson/Plame affair is irrelevant to truly helpful criticism of the war and solving problems.

Of course, most of today's Democratic Party doesn't know anything about constructive criticism and solving problems. They prefer shrill denunciations of the other side and an obstructionist defense of the status quo.