The Oliver North Effect.

I don't know whether Rove committed a crime in l'affair Plame.  (In fact, I rather suspect that he didn't.)  But this defense of Rove in The Wall Street Journal is ridiculous:

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove. ...

Either the law matters or it doesn't.  The WSJ has decided that it doesn't in this case -- though, strangely, it doesn't come out against the covert agent law generally.  Maybe it's saving that for its next editorial, where it'll write that Rove deserves the same kudos as Martin Luther King or Gandhi for disobeying an unjust law in the service of the greater good -- here, the fundamental right to discredit a political opponent.

Indeed, this reader looks forward to learning from the WSJ what other laws are unjust because they interfere with my ability to discredit a political opponent.  I'd suggest libel and slander laws as obviously vulnerable; surely, others are as well. Also, it'd be nice to know how many WSJ board members are required to approve a violation of the law.  A bare majority?  Two thirds?  One?  Inquiring minds, and all.

(It's hard to believe that I'm on the same side as these idiots.)

UPDATE:  John Cole is, again, doing the yeoman's work of the Plame Game, separating the legit disputes from the stupid and the silly.  See here, and then here.

UPDATE 2:  I'd be remiss if I didn't also link to a member of the tinfoil hat gang:  here's Preston's take.  So far as I can tell, Preston's claim is that Miller has decided to sit in jail for the next five or six months in order to embarrass Rove.  Or maybe it's because Miller fears a non-existent prosecution under 50 U.S.C. 421 (it doesn't apply to her).  Or maybe Wilson actually blew his wife's cover (JPod seems to favor this "theory," which, so far as I can tell, is based on nothing).  It's kinda unclear, because, well, Preston doesn't really concern himself with nuances like the "facts" or "the law" or "common sense". 

Thank God no serious person is linking this guy.  I mean, it'd be mighty embarrassing if, say, you were a respected law professor and somehow ended up endorsing this idiocy on your blog.