corrente

CNN:

In a letter to President Bush, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and [Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Charles Schumer] said the White House has made "at least five serious missteps" in the leak probe so far.

The biggest is leaving Attorney General John Ashcroft in charge of the probe ...

Other missteps the senators cited in their letter Thursday include:

• Failing to order employees to preserve evidence until three days after the Justice Department probe began.

• Not delivering that order to all staff until the following day.

• Waiting another day to extend that order to the Pentagon and the State Department.

In addition, the senators wrote, White House press secretary Scott McClellan's declaration that three senior officials were not responsible for the leak "has now put the Justice Department in the position of having to determine not only what happened, but also whether to contradict the publicly stated position of the White House."

What we've been saying about The Plame Affair since it broke is making the mainstream (Time, Useless News)—and people get it.

It's a story on a human scale; though the regime's all-too-human traits on display in the Plame Affair (ideological fervor, vengefulness, lying) are exactly those that brought us the Iraqi war, the Affair brings their effects down to a man, his wife, and the people she works with.

People understand, for example, that the vengeful felon(s) in the White House not only put Plame at risk for her life, but all her contacts too.

Meanwhile, The Gaseous One gives the latest defense of the regime apologists: The Plame Affair wasn't a crime; just a blunder: a "bumbling effort" to slam a critic. So, it turns out Bush is stupid, after all? With friends like these...