"While no one has so far ascribed partisan motives to Fitzgerald for pressing his case long after determining that Plame's outing wasn't illegal, reports that he is a Republican turn out not to be true."
I quetion this article because of this one line - I have not seen any public indication that Fitzgerald has determine there was no outing.
I've determined that - but I have not seen any official ruling.
Victoria Toensing, who helped write the law protecting the identities of covert intelligence agents, long ago said that no law regarding Plame had been broken. Surely, it can be presumed that Fitzgerald is smart enough to have likewise known from the beginning that Plame was not covered by the act. Yet he has continued to drag this idiotic mess out forever, rather than quickly announce that no laws were broken, and so that's the end of that - - you know, like he did with Harkin.
And so now I am wondering if Fitzgerald is involved in some kind of a too-clever-by-half entrapment scheme, a scheme in which rumors of far-reaching avenues of investigation and indictments are spread by targeted leaking from his office in order to try to draw one or more of the players into getting just paranoid enough to make a mistake or do something stupid so he can finally say, "Ah-haa - - gotcha!" to somebody, anybody.
I have been pretty ambivalent about Fitzgerald up to this point, but he is starting to get an odor.
Hey Fitz - - crap or get off the pot.