Megawatt choadery

Snowfall in June, barking cats, PZ Myers converting to Christianity---there are some things that just seem impossible. I would have put "Robert Novak demonstrating that he's an even bigger turd than you thought" on the list, because up until this afternoon, I would have thought it physically impossible for him to increase his douche quotient. He has maxed out, or at least I thought. But, nope, the man is a veritable genius of discovering new and interesting ways to push the boundaries of assholery into previously uncharted territory. In a recent interview with National Ledger, he crowed about his willingness to be a law-breaking patsy for the cavalcade of criminals that we call the Bush administration, and he was whiny about it to boot. When asked if he had a chance at a do-over at his treasonous outing of a CIA agent to punish her husband for blowing the whistle on the Bush administration's lies about WMDs in Iraq, Novak said this:

I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn’t ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me — or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don’t think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.

Not to just echo what Ben at Think Progress said, but even though it's true that Plame did in fact get hurt (lost her job, scared her family), her direct losses are just a tiny fraction of the overall picture here. I continue to be stunned at how many people don't realize what a giant fucking deal this whole thing is. It's not just that it hindered the CIA's ability to do their job or recruit people. It's that the Bush administration lied to the public about WMDs in Iraq in order to get us into a costly and unnecessary war, and when a single person stood up to them, they took their revenge in the least professional way imaginable. This story's very bigness is what makes it hard to see, I think. It's too big to wrap your head around. It's wrong on so many levels that it's hard to even parse them out. I mean, it's obviously not a blow job in the White House, but it comes close to being as important.