CHENEY AND ROVE TAKE A BAD BEATING AT THE LIBBY TRIAL

I'm supposed to be getting ready to host Senator Chris Dodd for a Blue America chat over at Firedoglake this afternoon (4:15 PM, est). There's a problem: Irving Libby (aka- Scooter). They're liveblogging the trial and the traffic is so immense that FDL is having server problems. I just spoke to Jane on the phone and then to Tim Taggaris (our Dodd connection) to see if this is something we should reschedule. No one thinks we should. So we're on. Meanwhile (as Ken reports below)...

Libby appears to be throwing Cheney and Rove under the bus. He also admitted he destroyed evidence. He's an attorney; he knows better. It's not beyond reason to start wondering who will be the vice-president when Bush ends his term in January of 2009.

pecial Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied about Cheney's early involvement in the disclosure of a spy’s identity.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, in 2003 that the wife of Iraq critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA, and that Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

“But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,” Fitzgerald said, “he made up a story.”

Fitzgerald also alleged that Libby in September 2003 “wiped out” a Cheney note just before Libby's first FBI interview when he said he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, from reporters, not the vice president.

I don't know if the Bush Regime was expecting anything different from Fitzgerald; they couldn't have. But they couldn't have been too happy with what they got from the defense: "In their opening statements, Libby's attorneys said Bush administration officials tried to blame him for the leak to cover up for presidential adviser Karl Rove’s own disclosures. He says Rove "set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb." Is there no honor among criminals any longer?

I wonder how glum Cheney's going to look sitting there tonight while Bush stumbles through his SOTU address. He looks really bad today, first from McCain basically blaming Iraq on him and now this whole Libby thing looking like he concocted the whole thing.