The End of Plamegate, Except for the Angry Left

Bob Novak--protean figure of the Plamegate saga, the most insignificant major news story of the last two years--has spoken at last. So maybe this will be the last we will hear about this nonissue, except from the perpetual grudgeholders of the Angry Left, who need something to do in between losing elections.

With a suitably spare, empirical style, Novak's column today details everything significant about his revelation that Joe Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate Iraq's attempts to secure uranium at the suggestion of his wife, a CIA officer who at one time worked under a mostly transparent cover. Novak confirms every significant detail except for the identity of his primary source, which, he notes, is known to the special prosecutor but has not been made public by some other means.

What will anger the Angry Left is that Novak (a) confirms that Karl Rove confirmed that Wilson's wife got him the appointment; (b) notes that Patrick Fitzgerald's informing Rove that he is no longer a target of the investigation implies that Fitzgerald has come to the conclusion that what Rove did--and he definitely did it--was no crime.

This will anger the Angry Left because by their definition anything Rove has ever done is a crime. Never mind that a Democrat prosecutor has determined him patently innocent on the law. He's self-evidently guilty because he works for the wicked President Chimpy W. Hitliar.

Here's the line that we enjoyed most in Novak's delivered-dry-as-the-Sahara column:

I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."

That's how pervasive the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is, Angry Left. It extends to our most sacred reference books.