IS PERJURY BY HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS A SERIOUS OFFENSE? I’d have said yes (in fact, I did say yes), but here’s an argument that the American people have already said no, by their electoral response to the Clinton impeachment.

I’m not at all sure I’m persuaded by this, but it’s certainly an interesting twist on the argument. More here.

UPDATE: Michael Barone isn’t convinced either, emailing:

I’m prompted to write by your posting on the blogger who argues that the American people rejected the idea that perjury by a high public official is an important crime because Republicans lost seats in 1998.

It’s true that polls showed most Americans didn’t want Bill Clinton impeached or removed for office. But the blogger relies on election returns. And the election returns showed Republicans won. They won more popular votes for the House than Democrats and they won more House seats than Democrats.

True, they lost a few House seats when they had expected to pick up a few. But they still won more votes. True, Newt Gingrich was out as speaker. But Denny Hastert, not Dick Gephardt, was in.

Good point.

DARFUR UPDATE:

The International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that rising violence is threatening food security in Sudan’s Darfur region. It says next month’s important harvest may be affected by fighting between rebels and government forces, banditry and violence over cattle looting and access to grazing lands. The main crops in Darfur include maize, millet and okra.

More starvation is likely to ensue. Unfortunately, the rebels are rather disorganized at the moment, though they seem to be trying to get their act together. Special Forces trainers and guns would probably help.

UPDATE: Much more here.

MOB VIOLENCE in California.

TERROR BOMBINGS in New Delhi.

SILVER LININGS: Scooter Libby’s novel is rocketing up on Amazon.

He’s still behind Lileks, though, and Lileks didn’t have to get indicted. (Via The Corner).

DAVE KOPEL LOOKS at Judges Luttig & Alito on the Second Amendment.

Of course, no such tea-leaf reading is required where Alex Kozinski is concerned:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths. When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases–or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as spring-boards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences. . . .

All too many of the other great tragedies of history— Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few—were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars. My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history.

Read the whole thing — especially if you work at the White House on Supreme Court nominations!

UPDATE: Law professor Tom Smith agrees. More here.

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

The suspense ended Friday for I. Lewis Libby, but one of the case’s biggest questions remained unanswered: What was the exact role of Robert Novak, the journalist whose column unmasked CIA operative Valerie Plame?

While it is now clear that the testimony of reporters Tim Russert, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller was crucial to Patrick Fitzgerald’s leak investigation, it still isn’t known who was Mr. Novak’s primary source.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

ROBERT GEORGE has more on the “Sambo” Kerfuffle, complete with sexually deprecating hateblogging from Steve Gilliard.

Additional thoughts here.

ANOTHER GRIM MILESTONE in the war.

UPDATE: Errors and omissions at the New York Times.

SO WHILE ALL THIS OTHER STUFF WAS GOING ON, the Insta-Wife and I were test-driving cars as part of our slow-motion campaign to figure out what will replace the aging (nearly 7 years old, so call it “late middle age”) Passat wagon.

Already tested: The Nissan Murano (nice, but lousy mileage), Infiniti FX45 (too small, lousy mileage), Honda Pilot (I liked it, she didn’t), Honda Odyssey (minivan; we both hated it), Lexus RX330 (too expensive, not enough room). Off the table: The Dodge Magnum Hemi wagon (I liked it, she didn’t, lousy mileage), the Passat TDI wagon (I liked it, great mileage, but the Insta-Daughter is sick of the Passat back seat, and she spends a lot of time there).

Today we testdrove the Toyota Highlander hybrid and the Subaru Tribeca. The Tribeca has its high points, but the Highlander was the big winner, beating out all of the cars I’ve driven.

I was ready for the quiet — turn the key and it doesn’t make any noise. I found it smooth, maneuverable, and quite impressively powerful. The interior is nicely done, though a bit busy and Toyota-ish; nothing wrong with it, but more functional than aesthetic. The third-row seats are good only for kids or small adults, but at least they’re available. Lots of cupholders.

Acceleration was quite impressive, seeming at least as good as the Passat wagon. It handled more like a car than an SUV, and the turning circle was quite small. The seats are very comfortable.

The Subaru is a lot better looking inside and out — some people don’t like the nose styling, but I do. The interior is very pretty and comfortable, probably the nicest SUV interior I’ve seen. Helen loved it. Handling was smooth and stable, though mushier than the Highlander. The downside: It’s a slug. I’d read reviews that said it was short on power, but I didn’t give them complete credence — when guys who testdrive Ferraris say that something’s sluggish, I don’t always agree. But the Subaru is slooowww. Pushing the accelerator to the floor makes the engine get louder, but doesn’t make it go appreciably faster, in a fashion reminiscent of underpowered GM products from the 1980s. Plus the mileage is still mediocre.

The winner: The Highlander. The mileage is actually better than the Passat, especially in town where I do most of my driving, it’s roomier and comfier, while driving amazingly well for something of its size. I doubt that it’s worth the premium for the hybrid on a purely economic basis — especially as old-style SUVs are trading at a deep discount now, with lots of “$5000 off” signs around the dealers, which would buy a lot of gas — but if you don’t want a minivan, and you do want room, and you’re offended by the idea of getting 16 miles per gallon, then it looks pretty good.

NOBEL LAUREATE and nanotechnologist Richard Smalley has died.

HERE’S A HUGE ROUNDUP of Libby-related stuff from the Wall Street Journal.

Also Austin Bay has thoughts:

The White House will make another political mistake if it decides to try to defend Lewis Libby. Fortunately –for the country, for the health of America’s governmental institutions– the Bush White House hasn’t pulled a Clinton and trashed the prosecutor. By and large the Bush Administration has respected the judicial process. A Clintonesque trash-the-prosecutor tactic probably wouldn’t work, anyway, given the national press corps’ pro-Democrat bias. Clinton could rely on the national press to amplify his tawdry demonization of Ken Starr. The national press hates the Bush Administration.

If Libby committed perjury he did so out of arrogance. The most likely scenario is this both simple and sad: Libby thought he could get away with it. But then so did Clinton. Clinton lied to a federal judge and lost his bar license for five years. It’s time to give the Beltway Culture a kick. If he’s convicted, Libby should serve time. No one is above the law. If Libby is judged innocent, then he’ll continue to practice law in Washington. As I recall, one of his former clients was Marc Rich (the mega-felon pardoned by Clinton in the waning days of Clinton’s administration).

I should have thought of that — conspiracy theorists, take it away!

On the question of what Libby was thinking — well, if the charges are true, it beats me. I actually had an email the other day from someone who used to practice law with him, and who expressed disbelief that a lawyer as smart and careful as Libby could get into this kind of trouble. Part of the problem, I think, is that working at the White House makes people stupid — between stress, sleep deprivation (which is no joke in that setting), constant flitting from crisis to crisis, and general bubble-ization, past a certain point people get effectively dumber the longer they stay. Is there more to it than that? Who knows. Fitzgerald didn’t make it sound like there’s a lot more here, but I suppose we’ll see.

UPDATE: Here’s a transcript of Hugh Hewitt’s interview with former prosecutor Andrew McBride, who — like Austin Bay — thinks highly of Patrick Fitzgerald’s work.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more — all of it bad for Libby, pretty much — here and here though there’s this upside: “On the other hand, though, Libby also clearly was not trying to out Plame for the purpose of endangering her, punishing Wilson or harming the CIA. He was trying to do something that was legal and appropriate: to discredit Wilson and knock down Wilson’s misleading story about why he was sent to Niger. He should not have done it the way he appears to have done it, but he surely was not doing what Wilson and the Left have been claiming.”

UPDATE: Here’s more on that rather unfair Forbes article about blogs, from Doc Searls.

Bill Quick doesn’t mind the Forbes slagging: “Who cares? As usual, this chunk of bunk is hidden behind a big fat registration process, so nobody who matters is going to read it anyway.”

TOM MAGUIRE has a lot of thoughts on the Libby indictment, including these:

However embarrassing it might be, the NY Times may be forced to confront the fact that Nick Kristof is an important part of this story, since Fitzgerald essentially dates the beginning of this story to Kristof’s May 6 column. The column was riddled with inaccuracies which Mr. Wilson has since disavowed – let’s see if the Times tackles this.

And, per the summary (p. 5), it will be a bit harder for Joe Wilson and his many defenders to sustain the notion that his wife was not involved with selecting him for this trip.

And that was hard already.

A TAMIFLU SHORTAGE? Make more.

THIS SEEMS RIGHT TO ME:

Federal law enforcement attempts to use cell phones as tracking devices were rebuked twice this month by lower court judges, who say the government cannot get real time tracking information on citizens without showing probable cause.

This summer, Department of Justice officials separately asked judges from Texas and Long Island, New York to sign off on orders to cellular phone service providers compelling them to turn over phone records and location information — in real time — on two different individuals.

Both judges rejected the location tracking portion of the request in harshly worded opinions, concluding investigators cannot turn cell phones into tracking devices by simply telling a judge the information is likely “relevant” to an investigation.

“When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause,” wrote Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of New York in the latest decision Monday.

PDF of the opinion, here.

THE MOUNTAIN HAS LABORED AND BROUGHT FORTH A MOUSE: At least if this report from the Post is true: No Rove indictment, and only a lame False Statements Act charge against Libby, which wouldn’t even relate to the underlying issue. This will be a blue Fitzmas for some people if it works out that way, but it’s too early to be sure that these reports are correct.

More here. And Roger Simon has related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Okay, the indictment is out and it’s more like a large rabbit:

Libby was indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements. The five-count indictment charged that he gave misleading information to the grand jury, allegedly lying about information he discussed with three news reporters. It alleged that he committed perjury before the grand jury in March 2004 and that he also lied to FBI agents investigating the case.

(Indictment text here). Lying to a grand jury is serious, if true. The rest is Martha Stewart stuff. But this isn’t the Libby-Rove-Cheney takedown that the lefties have been hoping for — there’s not even a charge of “outing” a covert agent — and the very extravagance of their hopes will make this seem much less significant. If there’s no more, this will probably do Bush little harm.

Laura Lee Donoho, meanwhile, says it’s not Fitzmas, but Fitzween. Boo!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Various readers send versions of this: “That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! . . . Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer! . . . He’s got huge, sharp… er… He can leap about. Look at the bones!”

MORE: Some predictions. And Orin Kerr has further thoughts: “All things considered, the Libby indictment handed down today was narrower than I expected. As I read it, all five of the counts come down to Libby’s lying to investigators and the grand jury about his contacts with the press. The counts seem pretty clearly valid and tight on the law, although none go to the substantive offense for which Libby was investigated.”

Meanwhile, Byron York wonders why we still don’t know who the leaker is.

Michael Kinsley: “Either this whole prosecution is nuts or the mainstream media view of reporters’ rights is nuts. Which is it?”

Eugene Volokh wonders what a government official is supposed to do.

Jayne Meynardie emails: “Mouse or rabbit or whatever, if he knowingly lied to a grand jury, he should be punished, and no one should feel the least bit bad for him.” True enough — but it’s hardly what we were promised in the run-up to today, is it? Perhaps more will materialize, as I noted above — but as I also noted above, if this is all there is, it doesn’t live up to the hoopla.

Gateway Pundit has more on the “who is the leaker” question. Was there a “leak” at all? Fitzgerald won’t say. A commenter adds: “I think if I am ever called to a GJ, they will hear one thing… silence.”

A BLOG ADVERTISING KERFUFFLE: “Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate pulled campaign ads from a bloggers’ Web site Thursday because the blogger had derided a black Republican candidate in Maryland as ‘Sambo.'” The blogger in question is the often-excitable Steve Gilliard. He’s calling the Kaine campaign racist: “‘I guess they have a problem with black people expressing themselves in print,’ Gilliard said.”

I’VE BEEN READING JOHN BIRMINGHAM’S alt-history thriller Designated Targets, the sequel to his Weapons of Choice. So far it’s holding up quite well, though as yet there are no references to presidents Hillary Clinton or Condi Rice.

TOM W. BELL offers a post-Miers prediction, while Dan Markel explodes Miers-process myths.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus thinks that Michael McConnell is “near-ideal post-Miers nominee.”

I’d prefer Alex Kozinski — or my perennial favorite, Eugene Volokh — but Bush may feel otherwise.

Howard Kurtz observes:

Miers’s 24 days in the searing spotlight demonstrated many things. One, that the conservative punditocracy is a powerful force, and never more so than when it decides to break with a Republican president. Two, that the normally disciplined White House can look amateurish when it makes as many mistakes as it did on this nomination. Three, that a Supreme Court candidate may be able to survive a thin resume, but not also a bungled questionnaire, unimpressive meetings with senators, an attempt to sell her on religious grounds, gushing letters to her boss, and no trace of ever trying to seriously address constitutional issues. Four, that nominating cronies is risky business. Five, that the party seems divided (former senator Jack Danforth told CNN that the activists’ attacks were “mean” and “outrageous,” though they simply used the power of their words to undermine a shaky nominee). Six, that presidents really do seem snakebitten in their second terms (see Watergate, Iran-contra, Lewinsky).

Yes. Miers was a weak candidate, who might have been confirmed anyway if the White House had been on its game. But it wasn’t.

THE N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LAW AND LIBERTY is sponsoring an online symposium on Sarbanes-Oxley. Move fast — I participated in one of their online symposia and when I went back to post my followup comments it was already over. This is internet time, not law-review time!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: People are dying of AIDS, but the Congress is using CDC money to fund Japanese gardens:

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, engaged in a dialogue on the Senate floor earlier this week regarding the former’s amendment to transfer $60 million previously appropriated for a Japanese garden at an Atlanta federal building to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Their exchange provides a vivid demonstration of the warped priorities encouraged by pork barrel culture in Congress.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Tapscott has updated his post — the $60 million is for an entire package of upgrades, not just a Japanese garden. But the Senate has voted not to shift the money.

SYRIA MOUNTS PRO-REGIME PROTESTS and other responses to its political/diplomatic problems:

Officials are talking about rationing some consumer goods to manage the impact of sanctions, and are considering other measures, like releasing political prisoners or making overtures toward cleaning up corruption, as a means of rallying support, the analysts and people who work with the government said.

The efforts, however, may not provide much of a salve. At least one Kurdish leader, for example, said he doubted the government’s sincerity, and viewed its offers as far too little to make a difference.

“If they don’t allow for real freedoms and resolve internal problems, the people will not be behind them,” said Kheir al-Deen Murad, secretary general of the Kurdish Azadi Party in Syria. “They have to open up the political life.”

They are, however, deploying pro-regime protest babes. As arms-races go, this is pretty benign, at least!

UPDATE: Reader Russell Mitchell emails: “The pro-regime babes aren’t doing one thing… .. smiling. Tells you all you need to know.”

Indeed.

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE: “The movement of physicians from poor to rich countries is a growing obstacle to global health. Ghana, with 0.09 physician per thousand population, sends doctors to the United Kingdom, which has 18 times as many physicians per capita.”

LIBBY TO BE CHARGED, BUT NOT ROVE: And for False Statements Act violations, not any underlying misconduct. That’s what the New York Times says, anyway. Make of it what you will. (Via RWV).

UPDATE: Generation Why says that if the indictments turn out this way, it means that there was never a Plame story to begin with.