DISMISSING VALERIE PLAME & THE RULE OF LAW

Today Judge John D. Bates, a George W Bush appointee, issued a decision which once again reflected the partisan perversion of our American judicial system when he dismissed Valerie Plame’s law suit against Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Armitage for revealing her identity as a CIA operative in retribution for her husband’s criticism of this administration’s fabrications for war with Iraq.

In essence Judge Bates said that the leak of Plame's undercover while "unsavory" was “simply a casualty of Wilson's criticism of the administration”. In his ruling Judge Bates claimed that it was “within the scope of defendants’ duties as high-level Executive Branch officials” to rebut public criticism such as Joe Wilson exposing this administration’s attempts to twist pre war intelligence.

I watched Hardball’s discussion of this issue which included the Republican position that the Plame suit was partisan in nature and was now officially over because a judge had so ruled. What the Republican mouth piece neglected to mention while he was claiming that Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame were merely participating in a partisan attack against this administration was that Judge Bates was a partisan hack in a black robe.

Judge Bates hardly represents the independence of partisanship which should be required of our judiciary in order to insure a system of checks and balances exists. This is the same Judge Bates who as an assistant U.S. attorney worked with Kenneth Starr who argued for the release of White House documents while prosecuting President Clinton’s Whitewater investment deals yet as a judge supported Dick Cheney’s claims of executive privilege when he refuse to turn over energy task force documents to Congress. In that case a representative of an independent judiciary threw out the GAO lawsuit claim the GAO lacked the authority to sue the Vice President.

The Bates decision to dismiss Valerie Plame's law suit against those who violated federal law when they outed a CIA operative by claiming they were exercising their duty as high ranking officials in the Executive Branch is but another example where the rhetoric of checks and balances and an independent judiciary meets the reality of an activist judge promoting the anti-democratic ideology of a right wing ruling party dismissing the rule of law and thus exposing the nonsense about our nation being a nation of laws not men.