Libby trial starts this week under dimmer spotlight

[janx]

WASHINGTON — The perjury and obstruction trial of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby opens Tuesday amid diminished expectations for bombshells from a case that once dominated Washington headlines.

Save for the expected testimony of Vice President Cheney — a first for a sitting vice president in a criminal case, according to presidential historians — the case against Cheney's former chief of staff has lost some of its appeal. "It's going to disappear into the back pages of the newspaper, with the front pages devoted to Bush's new buildup in Iraq," says Paul Light, a presidential historian at New York University.

Libby, 56, is charged with lying to investigators and prosecutors about what he told reporters about former CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby has pleaded not guilty.

Plame's identity was leaked to reporters around the same time her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized intelligence used by the White House before the Iraq war.

--snip--

more at link:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-14-libby_x.htm

[grytpype]

1. The SURGE is just a Rovian scheme to get Plamegate off the front pages!!!!!

And to cover up his secret indictment!!!!!

[Annces]

2. It won't be in the shadows on the new media - Blogosphere

And it will be covered on DU.

[tridim]

3. No, the story doesn't have to be on the back pages..

But that's apparently the way some "respected" newspapers want it.

[janx]

4. ..and/or the way Paul Light wants it.

;-)

[janx]

5. Also, note this:

Libby is one of the highest-ranking Bush White House officials to be tried, and Cheney's expected testimony has become the case's centerpiece, vice presidential historian Timothy Walch says.

"This is unprecedented," said Walch, executive director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. "I think that in part the case is enhanced by the authority and power and prestige that Vice President Cheney brings to his office."

[daleo]

6. The Libby trial and the war are connected

At the roots, so to speak. Responsible journalism would emphasize this point, and link the stories, not use one as an excuse to downplay the other.

[Missy Vixen]

7. Sure it is

>The perjury and obstruction trial of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby opens Tuesday amid diminished expectations for bombshells<

The blizzard of stories on the subject in the past 48 hours (and the obviously coordinated effort to downplay the trial,) leaves me thinking that someone (or someones,) do not want the public focusing on what happens in that courtroom. At all.

Julie
still president for life of the PFEB