Franken: "Is he selling out the President?"

[longship]

Tom Oliphant: "Yup."

Oliphant and Franken are on this right now. Franken asks if Libby is selling out Chimp.

[long_green]

1. Meaning Libby or Cheney?

nm

[kenny blankenship]

2. Or is he portraying the leak as technically not an illegal act ?

since the President has classification/declassification powers at his disposal, and Scooter says the information was authorized by Bush for release.

By "portraying the leak as technically legal", I mean to include as a possibility the sense of creating a gray area, a technicality or technical ambiguity, in which case the rule that the tie always goes to the (Republican) President obtains.

[wookie294]

3. Maybe Libby wants to force Bush to pardon him

If Libby can make it appear that Bush was involved in leaks, maybe Bush will get scared and pardon Libby entirely. But a pardon would be a great campaign issue for Dems this year. Either way, Bush is screwed, just like in Iraq.

[longship]

4. This won't help the Chimp.

If the public perceives this in anyway as Chimp having lied to them, he can pardon anybody he wants. However, he risks being perceived as an obstruction on top of the fact that knowingly and flagrantly lying to the people in the matter of a crime connected directly to his office will likely be perceived as an impeachable offense.