Editorials on the Plame leak

Today (well I guess now yesterday) there were a pair of Op-Eds in the New York Times on the Plame leak (well, mainly Fitzgerald's investigation) by Nicholas Kristof and John Tierney. Kristof is arguing that special prosecutors often go to far, "they become obsessive, pouncing on the picayune, distracting from governing and frustrating justice more than serving it." Kristof points out that Ken Starr was very much guilty of this, and it would be a tragedy just the same if Pat Fitzgerald also followed Starr's path. (Fitzgerald is supposedly courting the idea of indicting current White House officials on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and revealing classified information and not on the original charge at hand of knowlingly revealing a covert CIA agent). He also states that in his opinion the administration was on the war-path against Joe Wilson and his wife . Overall, I enjoyed the unbiased perspective of Kristof's article. He did make me feel guilty by saying, "So I find myself repulsed by the glee that some Democrats show at the possibility of Karl Rove and Mr. Libby being dragged off in handcuffs." Geez, Nick, you really hit this one on the bulls-eye, I was really looking forward to that.

Tierney's article on the other hand, considered along with his previous article, was hypocritical. He complains about Pat Fitzgerald, stating that, "The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong" and "Neither [of Howard Dean's reasons for Fitzgerald's investigation] involves the original reason for the special prosecutor's investigation - the accusation that White House aides deliberately outed a covert C.I.A. agent." But didn't Tierney say in his previous article that Ken Starr rightly pinned a perjury charge on Bill Clinton. Hmm, doesn't that charge fit with the same mold of charges that Fitzgerald is considering? I guess the moral of his article is that it's okay to look for petty crimes and diverge from the original investigation when Democrats are the subject of the investigation. I might add that Tierney could learn a thing or two about writing from his colleagues, Friedman, Kristof, Krugman, and Rich.