the blogosphere showed better news judgment

* drum:

"It's an interesting dynamic. In both of these cases (Plamegate and Purgegate), it was the MSM that did most of the primary reporting but the blogosphere that showed the better news judgment. Why?"

* emptywheel:

"Which leaves us, two days later, to reflect on what the Hearing accomplished. Importantly, Waxman gave Valerie Wilson an opportunity to correct, under oath, many of the fictions the right has propagated about her in the last four years. Just as importantly, the Hearing served to remind us (as Patrick Fitzgerald did in his closing statements) that Valerie Wilson is a person, not an argument. Not only does she have kids and a husband. But she used to have an important role in protecting our country from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She served our country, and the gratitude our country showed her was to expose her, her family, her colleagues, and the assets she recruited to a great deal of danger.

But the hearing also did one more thing. It established uncontrovertibly that the White House did not follow statutes governing the unauthorized release of classified information. Regardless of what happens with the other materials Fitzgerald collected during his investigation, establishing that fact gives Waxman the ability to pursue more information. It took a matter of hours for Waxman to take the next step–asking Josh Bolten for a full accounting.
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Waxman established the groundwork for further investigation. Given his tenaciousness, given the fact that Waxman already used the threat of a subpoena to "encourage" Knodell to appear, I fully expect this investigation will continue. That's what the Hearing established–the basis for further investigation. "

* wapo ed (hiatt):

"Clearly we were insufficiently skeptical of intelligence reports. It would almost be comforting if Mr. Bush had "lied the nation into war," as is frequently charged. The best postwar journalism instead suggests that the president and his administration exaggerated, cherry-picked and simplified but fundamentally believed -- as did the CIA -- the catastrophically wrong case that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented to the United Nations."

got that?

* LAT:

"President Bush, members of Congress and virtually all counter-terrorism experts have acknowledged that defeating terrorists cannot be accomplished solely by dropping bombs on them. Ultimately, they say, ending terrorism will come only by addressing its underlying causes.

"Our long-term strategy to keep the peace is to help change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror by spreading the universal principle of human liberty," Bush said in March 2005.

But a close look at the United States' counter-terrorism priorities shows a strategy going in a different direction.

In recent years, the Pentagon has received a larger share of the counter-terrorism budget, whereas "indirect action" programs to win the campaign through diplomacy and other nonmilitary means have struggled for funding and attention, according to a review of budget documents and interviews with dozens of current and former U.S. officials.
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The U.S. approach to counter-terrorism is that "enemies simply need to be killed or imprisoned so that global terrorism or the Iraqi insurgency will end," Bruce Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy, told a House Armed Services subcommittee last month.

"This is a monumental failing," Hoffman said, "not only because decapitation strategies have rarely worked in countering mass mobilization, terrorist or insurgent campaigns, but also because Al Qaeda's ability to continue this struggle is … predicated on its capacity to attract new recruits" by publicizing U.S. military actions."

* LAT:

"As more Republicans called last week on Alberto R. Gonzales to resign, President Bush's aides began to look beyond the attorney general and focus on preventing the controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors from spreading — and endangering Karl Rove, the president's top political advisor.
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"This is one more chapter in the defense of Karl Rove," said one leading GOP figure who insisted on anonymity because he was speaking ill of the president's most powerful aide. "This isn't accountability, it's damage control, and it's protection for Karl.""

on FoxNewsSunday today, the first segment had two of the fired attorneys :-)