Just as Plamegate was starting to get really interesting – this time based on facts rather than speculation – most everyone decided to take a hike, including all those "investigative reporters" who seemed, strangely, to be out of leaks, the one true fuel of "investigative reporting."

There was Richard Armitage finally, after more than three years of silence, confessing that he had been the original leaker who spilled the beans to Robert Novak on the CIA wife who sent Joseph Wilson to Niger.  But even that belated and virtually forced confession would come under fire by none other than Novak himself, who remembered his conversation with Armitage differently.

Novak remembered a deliberate identification of Valerie Plame by Armitage, not just offhand gossip.  Novak remembered the timetable, making Armitage's stated reason for silence – the request of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald – a bit less than credible.

Novak remembered a lot and wrote pointedly, which those who care have read.  In fact, those who have read all that Novak has written on the subject must come to one inescapable conclusion.  The cantankerous old-school journalist who started it all, and was vilified far and wide for his effort and for his refusal to get along and go along with the mad cows of journalism, got it right.  He asked the pertinent question.  How did an unqualified third-tier former diplomat get an assignment from the CIA to find out if Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger? 

Novak found the answer, confirmed the answer and wrote the answer.  Had people paid attention to what he wrote, precisely, had Armitage confessed in any kind of timely fashion, had Colin Powell (who knew what Armitage said) acted like a diplomat, Joseph Wilson's self-and-left-serving sputtering would have found little audience beyond the conspiracy theorists for whom no fact has ever stood in the way of poisonous invective.

Bob Woodward also knew the answer, but chose not to write, for reasons he may or may not ever disclose.  Nonetheless, he repeatedly warned publicly, albeit cryptically and elliptically, that the story was not as it was being portrayed.  Did anyone pay attention?  Nope.  Woodward is rich and famous, deservedly so, a grown-up journalist who quietly goes about his business, resented by many whom, deservedly so, toil without distinction in his long shadow.

As we have previously observed, history is going to nail Plamegate as a bad day for journalism, a bad day for attack politics, a bad day for justice, now seemingly infected with the same spirit of gotcha for the game of it. 

That observation, as true as it is, is not at all comforting for the present. When there are political scalps to be taken in the here and now, the judgment of history seems but a trifle, if contemplated at all.  And, as Ann Coulter trenchantly observes, "history always begins this morning for liberals."  All the easier for the rottenest parts of it to be replicated over and over again.

So who's gonna get frog marched next week?