Writing for the Washington Post, David Broder’s latest apologia for White House law breakers, comes to the defense of Scooter Libby who was recently convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. He trivializes the conviction, which he refers to euphemistically as a “controversy,” by falsely alleging that there was no underlying crime. The underlying crime, Mr. Broder, was the unlawful disclosure of the identity of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame Wilson. There has been no conviction on that charge (yet) precisely because of Mr. Libby’s obstruction. Broder calls the prosecution…

“a sideshow — engineered partly by the publicity-seeking former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife and heightened by the hunger in parts of Washington to “get” Rove for something or other.”

If blowing the cover of a CIA agent is a “sideshow,” the main attraction must be truly spectacular. But the supreme irony in Broder’s comment is his accusation that Ms. Wilson, a career spy for many years, suddenly transformed into a publicity-seeker. And it’s equally absurd that Broder believes that the Wilsons were capable of “engineering” the activities of the office of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Broder eventually comes around to making a coherent judgment on the matter:

“Lying to a grand jury is serious business, especially when it is done by a person occupying a high government position where the public trust is at stake.”

But it is apparently not serious enough to be considered anything more than a sideshow in Broder’s Circus of Contradictions.