It is plain Libby should not have lied -- if lie he did -- to the special prosecutor. It should be equally plain that whether he lied, and deserves punishment, is a question extraneous not just to the outcome of the Iraq war but to the whole range of national concerns, from immigration to inflation to energy policy and airline bankruptcies. Though you would not have known it last week from the media's, and the politicians', relentless focus on the question. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz asks: "[A]re reporters, commentators, bloggers and partisans using the outing of Valerie Plame as a proxy war for rehashing the decision to invade Iraq?" You could get that impression, couldn't you?
One hates to generalize. One also hates not to inquire what all this has to do with the price of eggs. With our freedoms, that is to say; with our foreign policy, our economic aims, our culture. I don't think we have to call such a story wholly barren of significance. Nor do we have to salivate over it, as though it were the only big thing going on.
By contrast, a Supreme Court nomination is certifiably large stuff. This is due to the justices' propensity for inserting themselves into our most vexed national conversations: prayer, human life, gay rights, and so on and so on.
Alito, when the nomination news came down, was shelled instantly by the Left for his supposed "pro-life" outlook. What "pro-life" outlook? I wonder. The judge's record is pro-choice: That is, pro letting democracy instead of judges choose urgent outcomes.
A court that defers, when possible, to the citizens and resists the temptation to take over the proceedings is a court worth fighting for. In the outposts of political excess, the boo birds can trill their outrage; but George W. Bush, by naming Sam Alito to the high court, may yet drown them all out.