Novakula Fell Down and He Can't Get Up

Poor Sucker Carlson. First he gets bitch-slapped on "Real Time with Bill Maher," and then he loses his fellow wingnut Robert Novakula to a broken hip, or was that a jackboot up his ass? Apparently the CIA "outer" fell down in his Miami hotel room after a long night of peddling spin, and won't be there to face the music from Carville and Begala on CNN's Crossfire

His accident also marks the one year anniversary of this lovely piece - Robert Novak is a Coward - due to his role in the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.

Leaking the classified identities of CIA operatives is a felony that can result in a ten-year prison sentence, not to mention a $50,000 fine (that ought to buy a couple of pairs of sneakers for some Iraqi children – oh, wait . . . they only need one shoe each). The reasons for such a law being on the books, and for carrying such a stiff penalty, ought to be clear to any creature with a working frontal lobe. When names get named, people get killed. Such a heinous crime is, to quote Senator Charles Schumer, “despicable.”

Politics is not much different from football, which is probably why it interests me in the first place. One of the rules is that if a player from either team drops the ball, the other team gets to pick it up and run with it in the opposite direction. Every realistic Democratic candidate called for an independent investigation of the leak. Senator Jay Inslee, the Democrat from Washington, said he intended to see “whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”

Novak should be thrown in jail, perhaps even a military brig, immediately. Those provisions in the law that protect the Fourth Estate should not be extended to him, for he is no objective reporter. He’s a columnist, and if you’ve ever read one of his pieces, or suffered through insomnia while watching Crossfire, you know that Novak is no more a journalist than is Rush Limbaugh.

Even if Novak (and Rove) is held harmless, just the appearance of the impropriety that led this country into war, among other things, merits Congressional exploration of impeachment. Conservatives will wear a brave mask, but they must be aghast at Bush’s drop in the polls, and even the most supportive pundits are assailing the spending on reconstruction in Iraq; today it was Cal Thomas, as far to the right of the planet Earth as any star out there.

Nothing more has happened since, of course. So here's to the weeks of discomfort for our friend, Novakula. Perhaps a rogue CIA agent or even Ms. Plame, herself, helped the Grand Novakula out of his Miami tub.