No Indictments From Fitzgerald?

Upate: Welcome Salon readers and thank you for your comments, even the angry, belittling and purile ones. I'll address some of your thoughts at the end of this brief post.

Let's hope William Kristol is right in this prediction (and wrong on Miers):

And here is the point: Unless the perjury is clear-cut or the obstruction of justice willful and determined, we hope that the special prosecutor has the courage to end the inquiry without bringing indictments. It is fundamentally inappropriate to allow the criminal law to be used to resolve what is basically a policy and political dispute within the administration, or between the administration and its critics. One trusts that the special counsel will have the courage after conducting his exhaustive investigation to reject inappropriate criminal indictments if the evidence does not require them, no matter how much criticism he might then get from the liberal establishment that yearns to damage the Bush administration through the use of the criminal law.

And I will go out on a limb to say this, based on the very limited information one can glean from press accounts: It seems to me quite possible--dare I say probable?--that no indictments would be the just and appropriate resolution to this inquiry.

h/t Real Clear Politics

Regarding the comments received from Salon readers:

Several of you alluded to this position as being unfair since the Clinton articles of impeachment were for obstruction of justice and perjury. No one I know of, including Kristol if you care to read the entire piece, says obstruction of justice or perjury should go unpunished.

Bubba broke a rule that's pretty well known: Don't go messin' around on the Main Squeeze, then he looked the national TV camera in the eye and lied, then he lied to the grand jury. That's a pretty cut and dried case. Rove and/or Libby may have unknowingly broken a law that's obscure to the point of being unknown and they've never looked the nation in the eye and lied about it. We'll see about what they said to the Grand Jury.

It's true that Bubba didn't get busted for lying on camera to the nation, only for lying to a grand jury, but any fool can see that there's a major relativity difference here. Conservatives had a big, fat, presidential guilty party in Clinton; liberals are foaming at the mouth over obscurities and underlings in this case.

I respect Peter Swiderski for putting his name on his comments and then saying something intelligent enough. If his first three predictions are true -- big indictments with lots of juicy detail -- his third still isn't true, as long as the indictments stay at the Rove and Libby level.

Mmmm...Sultry, read your current history, OK?! The only people lying about Niger were the French and Wilson. I guess it's so much easier to be outraged if you're swinging in the dark.

Mizerock, if someone's paying me for my views, please let me know where they're sending the checks. I could use the money.