Jason Leopold Freakout* Watch; Sealed v. Sealed speculation

News that Richard Armitage was the secret Plame leaker—at least according to journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn—ought to at least have the salutary effect of putting the SECRET ROVE INDICTMENT!!! crowd—especially at Raw Story and Truthout— out of business for a little while. ( I’m especially anxious to see what Jeff Goldstein has up his sleeve in the way of well-deserved gloating. ) After all the venom directed at a couple of my blogging friends—Ace and Seixon especially—by Leopold, Larry “the Unstable Guy” Johnson, Larisa Alexandrova or by their sympathizers, I’m really glad to see them begin to eat some crow on this. And that prevaricating smarm-monger Joe Wilson, too.

The news that the leaker was actually Armitage didn’t come as much of a surprise to me, or to most bloggers on the right. That’s been the rumor for quite a while. But no matter who it was, most people saw the debunking of Joe Wilson’s blatant lies about his Africa trip as a trivial issue and probably a net good, since Valerie Plame was the one who recommended him for the bogus fact-finding mission in the first place. Plamegate fades into insignificance, in any case, when compared with MSM exposures of serious national security info like the SWIFT program and the NSA wiretaps, to name just a few.

Ol’ Sparky tips me to this excellent Byron York roundup of the case, which asks the question, why was Scooter Libby indicted, whereas Armitage wasn’t? York raises and excellent point about the perceived distinction between “good leakers” and “bad leakers”, but I still have to ask…

How do we know Armitage wasn’t indicted?

Leopold has been beating relentlessly on this “SEALED v. SEALED” indictment that Fitzgerald filed, claiming that is actually an indictment of Karl Rove. But if that indictment really exists, why should we assume that it has Karl Rove’s name on it? The only reason we would have to believe that is that Jason Leopold says someone told him that.

What seems far more likely, in light of recent revelations, is that Fitzgerald has indicted Armitage as well.

*Title edited; I knew Leopold had had issues in the past, but I’m informed the original title of this post hit closer to his problems than I had realized or intended—which was a little too Larry Johnson for me.