It will be interesting to see if the court will allow the suit to proceed, as they did in the case of Paula Jones v. President Clinton.

That is the sort of lawsuit this is: one filed against government officials. Usually, they have immunity from lawsuits like this if the court finds the complaint to be political as opposed to constitutional.

The Paula Jones lawsuit was allowed to proceed because it was related to employment discrimination. Discrimination suits are allowed against the government. I believe this suit is about political retaliation, so Plame may not have much of a case, especially because her husband is also a plaintiff. It likely would have been a much stronger suit had she filed on her own.

Unless she is able to prove there is a direct link between the actions of the defendants that resulted in employment discrimination against her, I doubt the court will let this case proceed. That is, legally, probably better, because this suit is all about politics. The Wilsons, IMO, are using the suit to extract political payback--it is a tit for tat thing. That can really harm future administrations' abilities to take controversial actions, and even more importantly, it can water down the enforcement effect of suits like this against really bad employment discrimination against little guys like the rest of us.

I've never felt sorry for the Plame/Wilson publicity machine. I HATE the CIA & it's very existence (unconstitutional and very undemocratic IMO), and I'm REALLY not a fan of the law that says you can't expose an agent's identity. Dubya's Daddy (former head of the CIA, in addition to former prez) is a BIG FAN of the law, don't forget. Until it can be used against the political enemies of the Republicans, of course.

The Republicrats have conveniently forgotten this draconian law was passed in the wake of the reactionary Reagan era, to silence critics administration policies. So the irony that this administration is using this tactic to smear it's critics isn't lost on me.

But for those of you who don't know or remember, this bill was a piece of work by the William Casey CIA, Dubya's Daddy (who in addition to being a former prez, is also a former head of the CIA), and other avowed enemies of Philip Agee's.

It is hard to measure the importance of the publication of his book "Inside the Company" to the world's knowledge of the secret operations of the CIA in destabilizing the Third World's attempts to democratize and overthrow incredibly repressive authoritarian regimes that made the Soviet Union look like Girl Scouts. Had he and some other brave souls never dared to expose the identity of agents, the world would not have a record of all the really, really horrible things the CIA did then and continues to do now, with no constitutional mandate whatsoever.

How soon the desire for wreaking political vengeance helps us forget these things.