The Scooter Letters

What does it say about your own character when your character witnesses include Henry Kissiner [1], Richard Perle [2], John Bolton [3], Paul Wolfowitz [4], Donald Rumsfeld [5], and the "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" [6]?

Some of his fans are not of low character; they are just numbingly pompous:

Dear Judge Walton,

I am the literary editor of The New Republic, a position that I have proudly held since 1983. I am tne author of books about religious philosophy and history, and modern identity, and nuclear strategy, and also of many essays on political and cultural subjects. I am in no sense a neoconservative, as many of my neoconservative adversaries will attest. I am, to the contrary, the kind of liberal whom many neoconservatives like to despise. (This is fine with me.)

I trouble you with these internecine details of the intellectual wars because I do not want my expression of admiration for Scooter Libby to be mistaken for ideological solidarity, or to be dismissed as the testimonial of a political comrade. What I want to say to you about Libby, as you consider his sentencing, is instead the heartfelt effusion of a grateful friend.

(And speaking of pompous, check out Richard Perle's fey monogrammed stationary [2].)