Stupid Liberal Media

So last year, Valerie Plame (the outed CIA agent) went to one of the America Coming Together (Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, you know, those guys) concerts during last years election campaign. Apparently this is news.

Read the article, tell me what you think.

I have a few issues with this article:

First of all, it makes it sound like this is something crazy, calling America Coming Together an anti-Bush group. It's an election season! You're either anti-Kerry or anti-Bush! You choose sides, having a group that is totally against the president is really weird during an election season, but that's just me. The article keeps refering to the concert as the "anti-Bush concert". Not the "America Coming Together concert", or the "rock concert" or whatever. No, the anti-Bush concert. From the tone of the article, it sounds like the fact that this concert went on at all sickens the writer.

Secondly, the fact that this article has been written at all just boggles my mind. Robert Novak's column that outed Plame as an CIA agent ran on July 14, 2003, so in the fall of 2004 she decided to go to a concert that supported the man running against the Bush administration. Really? We're shocked by this? She decided to support the guys who didn't leak her name to the press? Wow. Good work there.

Third, when did Plame stop working for the CIA? I know once Novak's column was printed she stopped being undercover, but did she stop working for them all together? Is she still working for them? I don't know.

The article ends with this:

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Plame did arrange her husband's trip even though he repeatedly denied it.

This is false. No one really knows how exactly Wilson got the job. First of all, Wilson is qualified, it's not exactly like he's an unknown. Second of all, the most Plame could do was SUGGEST Wilson for the job, she didn't have the authority to authorize or arrange the trip, someone higher up had to.

So what's the point here, what is the big deal about her going to this concert? This article has gotten play at the right wing and left wing blogs. On Powerline they just quote the article and makes it seem like the fact that she went to this concert damns her. Over at Americablog, John has this to say:

Wow, that's a hell of a new standard for leaking highly classified national security information.

It's okay to break the law and jeopardize national security in a time of war by leaking highly classified information, so long as your intent was to harm someone you think might have been a Democrat, or might become a Democrat at some time in the future.

I agree with John's point. Say she was some huge Democrat/liberal person who happened to love Springsteen, how does that make the fact that Karl Rove leaked her name to the press any less relavent? I mean, he outed a covert CIA agent, who cares what special interest groups she donated to? Plus the fact is that she donated/went to this concert AFTER she was outed! Who cares?!