Dog Bites Man!!!

"Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. "

George W. Bush, 09/30/03

"Defendant further testified that he advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]. Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."

Government's Response to
Defendant's Third Motion to
Compel Discovery, US v. Libby

So the liar-in-chief has been revealed to be the leaker-in-chief (if you believe Scooter Libby who, after all, has been charged with perjury). Are you surprised? Perhaps only by the fact that the President seems to have involved himself with such a trivial matter as trashing Joe Wilson. Reminds me of Dick Nixon, who was forced from the Oval Office, because he allowed himself to be drawn into the cover-up of a "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate office building.

The kicker in Bush's remarks quoted above is, of course, the part about violating the law. Even those of us who abhor the authoritarian presidency have to agree that--absent some statute, of which there seems to be none--the President may de-classify. (He's delegated some or all of that power to the VP, which may be questionable, but that's for another day.) So Bush wasn't breaking the law, just lying--again--to the American people.

Which, I guess, makes this just a dog-bites-man story.