Novak still being used

It appears from numerous reports that Novak is still working the “slime” angle of the “slime and defend” strategy designed to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, (as partisans, ironically), with his latest broadcast of the name of Plame’s former CIA front company.
As a willing tool in some kind of war between the White House and the CIA, Novak seems to be digging himself ever deeper. Josh Marshall thinks that widening the story to cover this feud doesn’t do the White House any good, as it always circles back to the misuse of the intelligence and the deliberate misleading of the American public into an unwarranted war.
News that these classified-leak cases are hard to prove, despite the undeniable damage done to national security and the efforts to rein in weapons of mass distruction, left me feeling somewhat discouraged the other day, but then it occurred to me that the Republicans have it all backwards. They see calls for a special prosecutor as partisan, and prefer to stonewall and rely on their dependable Attorney General to “get to the bottom of” something that Bush either already knows or could know easily by sitting down with his Vice President and a few other key aides and having a serious heart-to-heart.
In fact, if those who leaked classified information (for tactical political advantage, no less) are never produced, and the White House manages to batten down the hatches and prevent the launching of an independent investigation, it won’t change the fact that somewhere in the chain of custody of a state secret, the secret was handed over from someone authorized to know it to someone not so authorized. The crime remains, a crime that Bush the father has equated with treason.
So, maybe they think they can ride out the scandal in a lawyerly fashions, but what will they do if the next election rolls around and their designated opponent is able to complain about unrevealed traitors in the White House?