Spin Dry (Billmon on Rove)

[StefanX]

Looks like the Rovians are, once again, fighting the previous battle. They've gotten used to successfully spinning against the Democrats - but you can't "spin" against the criminal justice system.

Spin Dry

It looks like the wing nuts are emptying the kitchen cabinets, the closets and the attic looking for silly arguments tnat can be used on Karl Rove's behalf.

You've probably seen or heard some of this dreck -- like John Podhoretz's argument that Wilson outed his own wife by putting her name on his corporate web page (which, as Greg Saunders at This Modern World notes, Fox News quickly morphed into the complete lie that he posted her CIA affilation as well.)

Then there was Faux's John Gibson, who claims that Plame outed herself by appearing at public events where there were (gasp) photographers. In Gibson's imagination, cameras apparently possess some kind of powerful magic that allows America's enemies (other than Karl Rove, I mean) to identify undercover CIA agents simply by looking at their pictures.

Does the Man from U.N.C.L.E. know about this?

And of course you've got the endless microscopic hairsplitting over what Karl did and did not know about Plame and her job, and whether he did or did not "intend" to out her to the oh, six or seven reporters on his get-Joe-Wilson call list.
...
Spinning unfavorable media stories is easy; deflecting accusations from the hapless Democrats easier still. But the Rovians are dealing with a prosecutor and a grand jury who mean business, and a set of federal judges who appear to have found the evidence presented to them rather compelling. As Larry O'Donnell recently noted at the Huffington Post:

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

Everything -- including giving Fitzgerald permission to subpoena journalists at two of the country's most powerful and prestigious news organizations, and jailing one of them. If you think judges do that kind of thing lightly, or based on completely spurious evidence -- well, you may have a lucrative career ahead of you as a Fox News commentator.

But back here in the real world, it's possible the Rovians have finally run up against the one opponent they can't spin -- or steamroll or intimidate or undermine with dirty tricks. And that's the criminal justice system.

-- Billmon, 13 July 2005