This guy gets it

Gene Lyons weighs in on the PlameGate affair and the ever Deeper Mess Dunklin Daily Democrat 10/19/05.

The closest thing in Washington to an intellectually honest neo-con, [Wilimam] Kristol [editor of the Weekly Standard] also lamented "the criminalization of politics." Well, cry me a river. Where were Kristol and his magazine during the late Clinton scandals? Beating the drum for Kenneth Starr and his leak-o-matic team of Whitewater fantasists and bedsheet sniffers, naturally. Fake lawsuits, phony investigations, trumped-up accusations and the lot. All justified by Bill Clinton's extravagant folly and desperate little lies, they insisted. ...

What's more, if ABC News' George Stephanopoulos is correct in reporting what an anonymous little bird told him about President Bush and Vice President Cheney's direct involvement in discussions about how to neutralize Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, after he went public about false claims regarding Iraq's non-existent nukes, then there's no telling where things could end.

Kids, can you say "unindicted co-conspirator?" I thought you could. ...

Another potentially complicating factor is that key White House witnesses, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, made their first statements to FBI agents back when the Plame investigation was in the presumptively more reliable hands of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Now they have to live with them. The appointment of a nonpartisan pro like Fitzgerald must have caused sweaty palms all around.

And Lyons is keeping his eye on the ball in this whole thing:

It's easy to get lost in the minutiae of an emerging Washington scandal and forget what it's all about. At bottom, the Plame investigation is about how the United States duped itself into invading Iraq on false pretenses, about the substitution of radical-right ideology for professional intelligence-gathering, and about ruthless political revenge against dissenters from the party line. (my emphasis)

This guy really seems to have his head screwed on straight.  There are columnists out there like Jules Witcover and Gene Lyons actually writing substantial stuff.

And David Broder is still known as the "dean" of the punditocracy?  Gene Lyons writes better stuff in a normal week than Broder writes the entire year.  And Lyons only writes one column a week.

And Lyons is absolutely right to say that "Democrats shouldn't gloat" over the current troubles of high officials.  I totally agree.  Tempting as it may be to see a bunch of lying, callous, arrogant warmongers begin to be called to account for their crimes.  To see some of the slimiest characters ever to crawl into American politics get the infamy that they deserve.

No, it just wouldn't be right to gloat over that.  As Richard Nixon famously said on the question of paying hush money, we could do it.  But it would be wrong.