Pants on Fire

The interesting thing about the Scooter Libby case is not that he lied to the FBI and the grand jury. It's that he lied so obviously and ineptly. I keep reading what a smart guy he is, but his years at the side of the Prince of Darkness clearly taught him nothing about the art of deception.

It's particularly unfortunate, if predictable, that Libby's supporters still insist that some sort of miscarriage of justice has occurred, as if what might be the strongest perjury case ever had just not played out before us all. Nine witnesses -- including two co-workers -- contradicted Libby's story and testified that Libby knew about Valerie Plame Wilson before his conversation with Tim Russert, during which Libby claimed to have been first told about her CIA job. Yet we still have to hear this sort of thing from the likes of Mary Matalin, as quoted in today's Washington Post:

"Scooter didn't do anything. And his personal record and service are impeccable. How do you make sense of a system where a security principal admits to stuffing classified docs in his pants and says, 'I'm sorry,' and a guy who is rebutting a demonstrable partisan liar is going through this madness?"

What??? I guess Mary hasn't figured out that there are ways of rebutting Joe Wilson that don't involve lying to the FBI and a grand jury. And what does what happened to Sandy Berger have to do with all this? Nothing, of course, but in Washington World, it is all partisanship, all the time. Facts be damned.

Libby has learned what Martha Stewart and many others also have learned: It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do. It doesn't matter whether an "underlying crime" has been committed. If you lie to the feds, you are in for a world of hurt.