There's one thing about this that really gnaws at me, and that I haven't really read much about in the mainstream media or blogs.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, Alexander Haig, and a slew of other right-wing wackjobs have all thrown out varied wordings of the idea that, somehow, because Fitzgerald couldn't bring an indictment for the actual revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity, that the perjury/false statements/obstruction of justice indictments are somehow irrelevant, frivolous, etc. They characterize these indictments as the desperate act of a politically motivated prosecutor who "couldn't get the original indictments to stick" with respect to the leak. The "witch hunt" rubric has been used on more than one occasion.

Now, the hypocrisy of this rationalization when compared with the Clinton impeachment proceedings has been well covered. Nobody's come to expect consistency from these mindless idealogues, so it's not shocking that they're condemning the exact same behavior they supported when Ken Starr was going after Clinton (investigating a crime, and, when the original crime can't be proven, indict on perjury and obstruction.) It's also not shocking that they'd consider lying about receiving fellatio and lying about giving your intern a cushy job at Revlon to be worse than lying about a potential conspiracy to go after an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq by revealing his wife's identity.

The hypocrisy is underscored and boldfaced, however, when you consider that the perjury that Libby is accused of is VERY much germane to the original charges being investigated, whereas Clinton's alleged perjury and obstruction of justice were the result of about six hard left turns from the Whitewater scandal being originally investigated. Clinton absolutely lied about his sexual affairs, and very likely lied and obstructed justice with regards to other tributaries of the investigation, but even the overzealous Starr couldn't build a case that there was any lying about Whitewater. Libby's alleged perjury, on the other hand, was a key barrier to Fitzgerald being able to get to the bottom of the leak investigation. Clinton was lying about his relationship with Monica so he could keep his dirty little secrets about his sex life; Libby was lying about where he discovered Plame's identity so he could throw off the investigation of the leak itself, and possibly to shield even higher level administration figures from blame in the matter.

So, even if Dubya's water carriers were to admit an equivalence between what Starr did and what Fitzgerald is now doing. they'd be full of shit, because Starr went way further to find the perjury/obstruction charges than Fitzgerald did. And Fitzgerald did it at less than 1% of the cost of the Starr investigation, something fiscal conservatives should rejoice about.