You are the real hypocrite, and no backsies.

I am a hypocrite...

But you are the real hypocrite...

But I am rubber, and you are glue -- and the charge of hypocrisy does not stick to me! It sticks to you!

The subject: the absurd demand of partisans that I explain what I mean when I say something, and the bizarre insistence that I must "explain" how what I say in one instance is coherent with other things I say in other instances. That is absurd!

As far as the Plame situation goes, I have NEVER offered an opinion about it at all. Why? Because it is complicated. It involves legal questions. And I know so very much about the law that I know that I do not understand it in this case. That is why I blog: to not explain issues in my particular professional field, a field in which I am not especially interested. Why is this so surprising?

I do not understand the issues involved in the Plame leak or the domestic surveillance issue, as I have repeatedly stated. All I know is that the Plame case is difficult, but that the leak there is not important. Likewise, the spying revelations are a mystery to me, but it is clear that that the leaker in this case is a traitor who should be shot for compromising national security in a way which is impossible to actually describe intelligibly, but which is nevertheless very real. American jurisprudence is very advanced. That is why it is so hard to explain.

But it is the leaker of the domestic spying program information who must be judged the most harshly. How is it this person's prerogative to determine the morality or legality of what she or he was asked to do? That is outrageous! In our system of democracy, we do not want individuals who believe that they have been ordered to do something illegal to speak out.

What could be more un-American than for a person in the government who believes that she or he has been told to violate the law to say so to a member of the press? That is just sick! If the president has made a judgement about what is legal and what is right, who is some "government employee" to contradict him? Who does this government worker serve, anyway, the president or the "nation"?

If we have reached a point in which individual members of the government are so debased as to risk their careers and lives simply because they think the Constitution is being violated, I must weep for America. Blithe yammering about how it didn't really hurt just makes them look all the more partisan.