Time to talk impeachment

So I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is guilty of lying. That's no surprise to anyone who has followed his trial and watched the evidence unfold on paper proofs in this trial.

No surprise, either, that the coalition of the Kool-Aid immediately, and laughably, start screaming "pardon" for Scooter, even as his lawyer promises appeal. Why not? President Bush's daddy pardoned the Iran-Contra criminals who got caught doing his bidding. Bush 1 even pardoned a couple before they went to trial. Deja vu.

And, ironically, Libby knows something about pardons: He managed to persuade President Clinton to give one to his client, fugitive Marc Rich. Oh, the tangled webs we weave ...

But let's cut to the real chase.

Those paper proofs show that Vice President Dick Cheney, while claiming it was Bush's order, instructed both executives' No. 1 men, Libby and Karl Rove, to reveal the highly classified information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA operative in countertproliferation (and that arm is only on the covert ops side of the CIA, a fact that screamed "classified" to all players from the start).

So, will House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., begin impeachment hearings? Plame, herself, is to testify next week in House Plamegate hearings. Pelosi has said she's not doing impeachment, but how can she not now, after the revelations in this trial point ultimately to the elected officials, not the henchmen? It's the House's job to investigate and impeach, and the Senate's job to convict if those proofs are valid. How much more valid than the testimony in Judge Reggie Walton's federal courtroom?

If you're looking for information over the water cooler to counter all the insane red-herrings the coalition of the Kool-Aid have out there, factual media history over at Media Matters is a good start.

Oh, and remember this isn't just about one operative. Robert Novak, in a second, more damaging leak a week after outing Plame, outed her CIA cover company, Brewster Jennings. That second outing jeopardized the lives of every American agent in or ever in that operation tracking WMD worldwide, and every foreign agent and asset ever tied to this company in its 10 or 20 years of getting legitimized. Former CIA agents have speculated people, plural, were killed as a result of Cheney's mad meddling.

This was an act of treason against America and its allies. America is the people not the "unitary executive." Even if George Bush has the power to order declassified information on a whim -- one of the straws Cheney has grasped for even as the law says otherwise -- he is accountable to us.