Ah, Republican obfuscation. Isn't it impressive?

Except that this scandal doesn't have anything to do with Wilson anymore folks. Josh gets it just about right:

We now have the farcical spectacle of the Justice Department initiating a massive investigation --- with the net thrown almost comically wide --- in order to find out what the president could find out in a few hours, tops.

That's the whole story right there.

The president has said he wants to get to the bottom of this. Yet he has done nothing to get to the bottom of it. The only credible explanation is the obvious one: that he doesn't want to get to the bottom of it.

Whether the Justice Department can find the culprits on its own is an interesting legal chess game. But no more.

The president's lieutenants did this. Rather than trying to punish them, he's trying to protect them. The only thing the White House has been aggressive about is attacking the victims of its own bad-acts: Wilson and Plame.

These simple --- and I think indisputable --- facts tell you all you need to know about what's happening here.

Indeed. Of course part of the problem Josh is that there are people in the media who want to be led astray like this. They want, consciously or not, to protect W and the boys.

Furthermore, it's not just that the media is falling for the obfuscation campaign, some of them are willingly and consciously playing the role the White House wants them to play. Folks like Novak, Safire, and Howie are the most obvious administration shills at the present moment.