Libby's Defense Rests

by Steve

Scooter’s defense rested today, after deciding against calling Libby himself and Shooter as witnesses. There are two schools of thought surrounding the decision by Ted Wells not to call Libby and Cheney in Scooter’s defense. The first school of course is that Wells did not want to subject Cheney and Libby to Patrick Fitzgerald’s cross-examination. The other possibility is that Wells feels he successfully confused the issue by showing the jury just how malignant the entire Beltway media and punditocracy really are when it comes to gossip and gotcha politics.

What gets lost in all of this poo-poohing by the Broders and Woodwards of the world is that a national security asset and her front company, Brewster Jennings were blown up over this “gossip” and game of gotcha. As a result we have no idea what is really going on inside of Iran right now with regards to nuclear materials.

I will defer to better-informed people like Jane and Christy at Firedoglake, and Marcy at the Next Hurrah as to what will happen. But I’m worried that Wells successfully showed how terrible our current political journalism really is, to a degree that Scooter will get off.

By the way, if you have a few extra dollars, throw some coin to Firedoglake and The Next Hurrah to help offset their costs of liveblogging this trial for the benefit of all of us.