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Unwilling to give up the spotlight, secret agent woman Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, are frog marching Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby into civil court for blowing her cover. A Time/CNN report doesn't think the lawsuit stands much of a chance. 

A two and a half year special counsel investigation found no crime in Ms. Plame's exposure. Wilson was not charged either for outing her in his Who's Who in America entry.  Christopher Hitchens has a  link to a pdf of the actual Who's Who entry on Slate.

Maybe Vice President Cheney should keep his powder dry for his friends.
 

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Israel seems hellbent on destroying Hezbollah.  The western powers say, "take a deep breath and count to ten, or ten million."

David Ignatius of the Washington Post thinks Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah  invited the counterattack knowing it would destabilize Lebanon.

Charles Krauthammer asks, "where's the grievance?"  Israel has evacuated Gaza and Lebanon and is rewarded by attack.  Proof that Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, and Syria have a grievance with the existence of Israel.

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Israel is shellacking Lebanon in pursuit of the bad guys.  The Jerusalem Post frets that Israel may be playing into Hezbollah's hands by radicalizing Lebanon's weak democracy.

In today's New York Times (on-line subscription required), Tom Friedman thinks the behavior of Hamas and Hezbollah could be an effort by their sponsors, Iran and Syria, to hijack the fledgling democracies of Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq.

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A memorial service was held for Ken Lay yesterday in Houston, the same city where he was convicted 6 weeks ago.  He insisted on his innocence then.  Evidently he's had the last word. 

If a defendant dies in Texas before he can appeal his conviction the verdict is dismissed.  Ken Lay is a free man now, in more ways than one according to Bloomberg columnist, Ann Woolner. 

"And so, Lay's death erases the criminal conviction that it
took the federal government 4½ years to win…  The principle is called "abatement ab initio," the Latin
portion meaning "from the beginning." …  So when it comes to Lay, it's as if the Justice Department
never established a special Enron Task Force, never deployed
armies of lawyers and agents to determine his role in Enron's
collapse, never strong-armed Enron employees to give evidence,
never won an indictment, and, finally, never spent months
persuading a jury to convict him."

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Frenchman, Zinedine Zidane, responded to an insult from Italian, Marco Materazzi, with a common soccer move… the header.

According to Reuters, World Cup ratings in the U.S. tripled from 2002 to 12 million viewers.  Meanwhile, a Pew poll finds that 52% of Americans have a favorable view of France, up from 46% a year ago.

Coincidence?  I think not.

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I'm back.  I've been on vacation and forgot to have someone take in the blog.  Sorry it's looking a bit untended.

After a relaxing 2 weeks away from the news it was  comforting in a weird way to log on to a grinning and clapping Dear Leader.