Emptywheel: McClellan slips and implicates Dubya

in the burning of Plame:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/05/29/george-bush-authorized-the-leak-of-valerie-wilsons-identity/

Too long to excerpt.

Color me surprised.

I have no personal experience with organized crime or conspiracy - I mean, really, a clown?? - but surely anyone who's read even a few crime/mystery novels knows that Mr. Big has no direct contact with illegality, he preserves plausible deniability. (IIRC there was an excellent discussion on the Admin and plausible deniability at Crooked Timber a year or so ago.. I'll have to go back and look for the link.)

Of course I never imagined that the Admin could possibly screw up Iraq the way they did either.. I was certain that Nature would bite back, but I figured, oh, say, 3 years, 4 years before the extent of our problems would become apparent.

As in so many areas, the Administration's incompetence is beyond comprehension. Not even their criminal behaviors are implemented competently.

To call these guys a clown show would be an insult to clowns everywhere.

h/t Clown-B

I'd post Brad DeLong's aphorism here, but I never can get it straight. (Something like: "Even allowing for the fact that you know that they're worse than you can imagine, they manage to be even worse." And last time I went looking for it I wasted a couple of hours without finding it.)