Libby Mania
by digby
I knew today’s Libby testimony was good, but I didn’t have time to give it the attention it needed. Luckily, Jane’s posted the evening round-up and video run-down.Check it out.
Tomorrow is Tim Russert. Jane says:
There are three more hours of tapes to get through tomorrow, and then Tim Russert testifies. Fitzgerald could not have set the table for his appearance any better. Throughout the taped testimony, Libby repeats over and over again that he could not have heard about Plame from so-and-so, because he remembers being surprised when Russert told him. Well, Russert is going to show up and say he never told Libby about Plame, and if the jury were tempted to believe Libby over the endless parade of people who all would have had to mis-remember in exactly the same way in order for his story to hold up, the Russert testimony may strike the final blow. And while Russert no doubt dreads having to testify, he will probably use the opportunity to try and counter Cathie Martin’s assertion last week that he was in the bag for Dick Cheney, ever the pliant administration propagandist.
I’m looking forward to it. His friends at Fox are already coming to his rescue with clever stuff like this:
Newsweek magazine assistant managing editor and noted author Evan Thomas was asked on a local Washington TV program the other day whether the media has been bashing the president unfairly. His response — “our job is to bash the president. That’s what we do.” He went on to say that the President had lost support after he “kissed off the Iraq Study Group.”
Thomas in the past has acknowledged the media has a bias in its reporting — saying the press favored John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. His comments over the weekend followed an assertion by National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg — that the president had received a “free ride” for years, and now is getting fierce coverage.
Imagine that.
As Jane notes, the testimony shows that the Bush administration chose the King of the Kewl Kidz to make their case. (You’d think Fox had earned such an honor, but with their teensy credibility problem, they can’t be used for the serious stuff.) Still, it’s kind of them to keep up the fiction that the DC press corps wasn’t an mindless herd of moaning, bootlicking Bush sycophants for years. Maybe it will help the Monsignor repair his tarnished image.
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