I was going to perform one of my legendary smackdowns on this ill-informed letter in today's Rockford Register Star (the author of which, by the way, is a personal acquaintance), but I see that I've been beaten to the punch.The StoryChat comments on the paper's Web site have sufficed to put the poor fellow in his place. (Click on the "view all" line at the top of the StoryChat section to the left of the letter for a full helping of the comments, conveniently arranged in chronological order.)
I don't even have to bother countering the letter's preposterous claim that no one knows for sure whether Valerie Plame was a covert agent for the CIA. As one of the commenters has noted, the agency's director knows for sure that Plame was covert and has publicly declared so.
Nor is there any need for me to chide the writer for daring to compare Bill Clinton's falsehoods about consensual sex with an intern in the White House with Scooter Libby's far more egregious lies about a matter relating to national security.
There was a time when ridiculous letters like the one in this case would go unanswered unless someone bothered to write a response, which wouldn't get published at least for a few days (and then without benefit of the entire text of the first letter appearing with it). The paper's Web site has changed all that. Now, the drivel often is countered within hours.
