So, with the Scooter Libby verdict in, everyone is talking about it as a blow to Bush. But from a broader perspective, were there any winners in this case? Let’s break it down:

• Scooter Libby is obviously the big loser. Even if he does get a pardon from Bush. He’s no Ollie North; he’s not going to be able to parlay this prosecution into a prominent public career.
• In the narrow view, Patrick Fitzgerald secured a conviction on 4 of 5 charges, which was a success. But the only person he convicted was Scooter Libby — hardly what everyone was expecting when this non-scandal began — and he convicted him only for perjury, not for the underlying leaking offense. What he mainly succeeded in doing is demonstrating once again that ‘special prosecutors’ are a really bad concept.
• For those same reasons (the identity of the defendant and the nature of the charge), it’s anti-climactic for Democrats, who were hoping this would bring down the administration, or at least a big name like Karl Rove or Dick Cheney. Nope.
• Ditto for Joseph Wilson, who famously ranted that he wanted Karl Rove “frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs,” and his wife, Valerie Plame, about whom all we proved is that she really wasn’t as important as her supporters had portrayed her as being.
• The media crying for the investigation — I’m looking at you, Mr. New York Times — ended up getting several reporters in trouble, weakening the reporter-source non-privilege, and still not getting the big game that they wanted.
• Since Libby was the only one convicted, and only for perjury, it’s not a big blow to the administration — but it’s not exactly a shining moment, either.
• For the same reason, it’s hardly good for Republicans, generally.

Did I leave anyone out? (Some blogger, maybe?) I guess I’m trying to draw some broader lessons from this case, because as a purely legal matter, it turned out to be pretty darn trivial. I don’t subscribe to the view — I didn’t when Bill Clinton was in trouble, and I don’t now — that it’s no big deal to obstruct justice just because the underlying conduct wasn’t criminal. Whether the underlying conduct is criminal something which has to be determined after the fact, not something for witnesses or defendants to unilaterally decide. At the same time, if there was no crime, then the obstruction becomes mostly a technical violation — something we need to punish, but not something we need to dwell upon.

I mean, ultimately, what do we have? Scooter Libby either honestly forgetting when he told something to Matt Cooper and Tim Russert, or lying about it. Something it was legal for him to tell them. Whoopee. I miss the days when we had really important legal issues to discuss, like whether John Kerry deserved his medals from 30 years ago or whether George Bush was AWOL at the time.

It’s hardly even debatable whether or not telephone technicians should unilaterally — well, along with our elected representatives in the media, of course — decide how the U.S. should go about protecting itself from terrorism, foreign and domestic, is it? ABC’s The Blotter explains how an AT&T technician, Mark Klein, took the inside story of the NSA monitoring program to the LA Times, which couldn’t “follow” his technical explanation of the horrors he had seen. He then contacted the New York Times, which has smarter editors, and they figured it out and broke the story.

Mildly interesting. Far more interesting to me is the concept that this zhlub — see the picture on the ABC link — took it upon himself to decide, contrary to all logic and common sense, that “what he knows won’t help terrorists”:

“The only people that are being kept in the dark is the American people who are being misled and not realizing, not being told that their private information, that their liberties are being destroyed and tramped on,” he said.

So Klein, disturbed by what he saw — knowing nothing, not a thing, about anything other than what he saw, in terms of what policies were being implemented and why — didn’t contact law enforcement, or an attorney, or his supervisors, or make any attempt to keep the lid on something that maybe, possibly, was bigger than his understanding as an AT&T wire-monkey while he at least increased that understanding.

Mark Klein, AT&T technician, made the executive decision to go to the papers “to blow the whistle on what he calls ‘an illegal and Orwellian project.'”

He may be right. I doubt it, and so do a number of people in a lot better position to know. So he may very well be wrong. And what efforts did Mark Klein, AT&T technician, make to avoid screwing up something much bigger than Mark Klein if he was wrong? From what I can see, none.

America, meet your unelected, unappointed ombudsman of national policy: Mark Klein, AT&T technician. (Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

My Way News – Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial.

Just in case you happened to click here just this second instead of anywhere else on the Internet. Roundups all over the place. I like this one. But this one has the funniest excerpt / link:

Mark Daniels wonders if Dick Cheney will resign.

How that could be conveyed with a straight face is a wonder! They never learn: Cheney will survive us all.