Even though the desparate and grasping tone of your LTE makes civility a challenge. I suggest you dig up your ideological brother Richard Hobb's blog on trying Valerie Plame for treason. Many of the facts that you have somehow overlooked are contained there with convenient links to take you directly to sworn testimony.

I'll make it easy for you Trey. This will be my only post on this LTE. Feel free to retort at will. I'll read them all.

1. Perjury is a crime. Saying your memory was bad will not suffice if a jury in a court of law in this country finds that the evidence shows you are not speaking truthfully.

2. The CIA Director testified Valerie Plame was covert at the time of the Novak column.

3. Bush appointee Patrick Fitzgerald pointed out Valerie Plame was covert at the time of the Novak article.

4. Compromising Valerie Plame's identity has most likely jeopordized her sources in foreign nations, and hurt the US intelligence effort.

5. I feel more empathy towards Valerie Plame, a CIA employee who has served her country and risked her life in the defense of this country, than I do for a political operative who was convicted of perjury in a court of law.

6. Trey, you will certainly blame the results of future elections on the "liberal media." 22 GOP senators are up for reelection next cycle. What will they run on Trey? What will be their positive message? The care for troops at Walter Reed? The politicization of the Department of Justice under "I will not fire US attorneys for political reasons" Alberto Gonzales? On the overreaching provisions of the Patriot Act they so fervantly supported? Amendments that the Senate voted 94 to 2 to repeal(what party do you think the 2 are in)? Trey, the people you are trying to woo are so latched to the GOP that you are truly trying to hook people who are all ready addicts. I don't like to see you this desparate Trey. Just turn the lights down low, find your most comfortable chair, and know that this will all be over for you in a little less than 2 years. You will then almost definitely have a democratic president to critique liberally. The GOP is seeing to that.

Cheers, Trey,

Kevin "Hack" King

Republicans are horrible, evil, conniving, mean-spirited, Nixonian neo-fascists who want to impose a theocracy and throw all the gays, blacks, leftists, and Muslims in prison. Therefore, it’s okay to do anything necessary to take them down. By any means necessary, if you will.

When Taliban Trey Hoffman lobs this kind of verbal stinkbomb as some sort of "pre-emptive strike" in a vain attempt to forestall criticism, you just KNOW you're about to read some really good lies from him!

This must be the mental framework of 90 percent of the press, nearly all Democratic politicians, and a good deal of liberals out there. That is the only possible explanation for the complete lack of concern for justice or decency when it comes to the case of Scooter Libby.
"Must be"? "Only possible explanation"? Au contraire, Taliban Trey. Many, if not most, Republicans are honorable people, the majority who happen to believe in a conservative viewpoint. On the other hand, there is that small band of fringe extremists, and yes, I include you in this latter group, who utilize poison rhetoric and "scorched earth" anything goes tactics to smear their opponents. As an aside, there's nothing "neo" about your fascism.

Here is a man who faces jail time for essentially mis-remembering what he said to whom about when he learned that Valerie Plame was married to Joe Wilson.

Not that I fault Russert here. I don’t think there’s a single person responsible for the travesty of justice that has occurred with Mr. Libby. But a travesty it is.
Did anyone notice that Taliban Trey left out one little important detail? Mainly, that Libby's lying was done under oath in a court of law? (I imagine a massive power brownout in Peachtree City after Taliban Trey reads that last line and fires up his industrial-sized "but..but..CLINTON!" generators. Yes, Taliban Trey, Clinton lied under oath as well. Two wrongs don't make a right. Let's stay on topic.

Why did Libby lie under oath? Probably because, just like Taliban Trey, A) lying is second nature to him and B) he thought he could get away with it like he usually does

Here’s how I understand the case. Joe Wilson, a known critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, is sent by his wife to Niger to investigate claims of Iraqi attempts to acquire yellow-cake uranium, which is supposedly, in the world of the media, one of the main reasons we went to Iraq (in fact, it was just one of many).
Another lie from Taliban Trey. Joe Wilson did not criticize President Wartime Deserter until AFTER his wife was outed. Think about it folks, in an administration where loyalty is more highly valued than competence (remember FEMA?), do you really think the Bush folks would send a political CRITIC on a fact finding mission? They wouldn't, the lies of Taliban Trey to the contrary notwithstanding. Another lie from Taliban Trey: Wilson was not "sent by his wife". The CIA was looking for someone to go to Niger and Plame recommended her husband, who'd been a diplomat there.

Wilson, a retired diplomat with God-knows-what qualifications to investigate this kind of issue, goes to Niger and “investigates.” He comes back and before submitting the official CIA report, writes a column for the New York Times saying the allegations were indeed false and that the charges were trumped up by Bush to justify the war.
Another lie from Taliban Trey (seeing a pattern here, anyone?) Wilson was orally debriefed by the CIA within days after his return home from Niger, he never wrote a written report. He wrote a column for the New York Times when President Bunnypants insisted that Saddam had sought yellowcake. "God knows what qualifications"? He was an experienced diplomat who'd been posted to Niger before and had extensive contacts there.

The Bush administration, understandably concerned by yet another attack on its credibility, begins to ask questions about who Wilson and is and why he went. These are legitimate questions to ask, unless you’re a liberal, who have characterized such inquiries as part of a “witch hunt.” Had they stopped at asking questions, Taliban Trey, we wouldn't be having this conversation today. They didn't and we are.

Then it comes out in a Robert Novak column that it was Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, who sent him. The person who told him was Richard Armitage, former under-secretary of state and also a critic of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.

Well, the Democrats and the press decide this is practically a case of high treason and immediately begin accusing the Bush administration of leaking this information to the press. In particular, they target Karl Rove as the probable leaker.
Taliban Trey, it may come as a surprise to you but revealing classified information in a time of war is a classic definition of "treason". As it turned out, President Bush gave Dick Cheney the authority to declassify Plame's name for political gain in order to smear Joseph Wilson. It's sleazy behavior, but remember, it's President Lameduck we're talking about here.

Karl Rove was more than a "probable" leaker. He definitely leaked her name as well. And he lied about it initially under oath. He escaped prosecution when a junior Time magazine reporter broke grand jury secrecy rules and told Rove she'd testified about him under oath. Recognizing that he'd be convicted of perjury (just like Libby ultimately was) Rove ran back to the grand jury and testified that he now "remembered" leaking Plame's name. Whew, that was close!

In yet another attempt to appease the crazies on the other side of the aisle, Bush agrees to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to get to the bottom of this and vows that anyone found to have engaged in illegal behavior will be fired.

Fitzgerald learns almost immediately the identity of the leaker, Armitage, and never established that revealing Plame’s identity was indeed a crime. I have yet to read or hear anywhere that she was indeed covert and that revealing her identity was a crime. This fact is borne out by the fact that Fitzgerald never brought suit against anyone for that supposed crime.

Instead, he just kept on investigating until he caught someone for having a less than perfect memory.
Willful ignorance is your stock in trade, Taliban Trey. There were scores of article written on Plame being covert and the relevant statutes in law. And just last week Plame testified before Congress about her covert status.

The reason that Fitzgerald could not bring charges against anyone for this crime is because of Libby's perjury. Libby's perjury effectively prevented the grand jury from finding out the underlying truth: namely, that VP Dick Cheney declassified her name in order to smear her husband.

The case proceeds and even though the facts as laid out above are known, the press keeps reporting the mantra: Fitzgerald investigates who in the Bush administration leaked a covert operative’s name in order to get back at Joe Wilson for criticizing them.
Which in 20/20 hindsight turned out to be exactly the case

Meantime, the official CIA report that does result from Wilson’s visit confirms the likelihood that Iraq had gone to Niger seeking yellowcake uranium. Wilson is therefore contradicted by his own official report. Yet he keeps on griping about how he’s been unfairly targeted.
Two lies in one paragraph, Taliban Trey! The official report contained fabricated information from Italian intelligence agencies that was sold to a gullible Stephen Hadley (now NSA advisor) The CIA laughed at this "information" and it was soon removed and forgotten.

Secondly, this was NOT Wilson's report, Taliban Trey.

The press seem to care not a lick that the worst kind of nepotism has taken place and that a supposedly professional diplomat violated procedure by issuing forth his own opinion before the official report was completed.
Repeating something doesn't make it true, Taliban Trey. Wilson wrote his Times Op-ed months after he'd been debriefed, as I indicated above.

Does anyone remember Kenneth Starr? Do you remember how he was vilified by the Clinton administration and Democrats for investigating an actual crime in the form of the president lying under oath about his sexual behavior? Granted, the issue involved wasn’t as serious as a possible CIA leak, but that didn’t stop the Democrats from going after Starr like he was a modern-day version of Torquemada.
Kenneth Starr was a political hack who never did find any wrongdoing related to his original Whitewater investigation. Starr didn't have anything to convict the Clintons on so he kept leaking to the media like he did.

The Bush administration, on the other hand, has left Fitzgerald alone. They left Wilson alone, except for their attempts to rebut his false allegations.
That, and that little business about jeopardizing a covert intelligence operation in order to smear a political opponent...

Yet they are accused of treason and the worst kind of corruption.
Had anyone other than the President himself leaked Plame's name, they'd be guilty of treason.

I know people are angry about the war, but when the press and the Democrats revert to this sort of cynical, immoral manipulation of facts and the destruction of innocent men to achieve what they cannot achieve democratically, we are in real trouble as a nation.
It's called "accountability", Taliban Trey, and you'd better get used to it, because the next two years are gonna be full of "accountability moments". We are NOT in "real trouble as a nation" but you and your fellow cockroach extremists will be deprived of your ability to operate in the dark, away from the glare of accountability

They are destroying any hope of resolving differences in a civil and respectful manner, and I think it’s because they know, ultimately, they are on the losing side of history and won’t accept that 1) they may be wrong and that 2) they live in a country where the will of the people, not an elite, is supposed to govern affairs. So, they use “any means necessary” to accomplish their ends.
Taliban Trey, it is you and your fellow cockroach extremists who are on the wrong side of history, and I suspect you know it. The people of the United States installed a Democratic Congress in the last election to restore the checks and balances necessary in a democratic republic. I hope you can survive the upcoming Congressional fumigation, but I'll shed no tears if you don't.