Comments Elsewhere

Gus: “So — praise the most ruthless power in the White House for breaking the law to eliminate political oppoosition in order to help consolidate his hold on state power by punishing the wife of a man who told the truth about the government’s abuse of power, an abuse that has killed tens of thousands. Yeah, Karl Rove, defender of rights.”

According to the book of Revelation, in the coming ordeal, a servant of Satan or perhaps Satan himself will come into the world and destroy earthly tyrants as part of his rise to absolute power before the Second Coming. I mention this because I hear that Satan is a pretty bad guy, and his motives in destroying earthly tyrants will certainly be bad. But while these are good reasons to think poorly of Satan, they aren’t good reasons to cry about the trampled prerogatives of the fallen tyrants.

I mention this parable because, in the comment you are replying to, Stepp makes it quite explicit that his point is that if Rove outed a CIA agent, then he may be a real sleaze, but in this particular case what he did is, at worst, disregarding an expectation (confidentiality and support for members of a criminal conspiracy) that nobody has the right to demand be respected.

Stepp’s earlier claim that whoever did it deserves a “Libertarian Medal” is of course silly bluster. But so is your own reply, which simply substitutes a philippic against Bush and Rove in order to distract from the point being made about what CIA operatives do or do not have the right to expect — as if the sheer weight of their depravity could somehow make Plame’s complaint legitimate. You then follow up this red herring with a broadside against the intellectual “sophistication” of “anarchists, right or left”.

Come on, Gus. You’re smarter than that.