novakula's conspirators

Over at TPM cafe, there is an interesting thread about the bizarre outburst by Novak yesterday. A lot of the material on the thread is subjective speculation, but I can't help but feel enormous glee about this mean-spirited partisan hack's breakdown and the subsequent public parsing of the incident.

The one thing that I regret about this whole episode is that it seems like, by all accounts, the next topic on the program was going to be Novak's role in the whole Rove-Plame/Wilson scandal.

After two years of obfuscating and declining to comment on an "ongoing investigation" in which he played a major role, Novak wrote a column this week "defending" himself against ex-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow's contention that he had advised that Novak should not publish Plame's name. Of course, Josh Micah Marshall explained how Novak was desperately throwing out a red herring with his contentions.

However, the main point is that by commenting on this "ongoing investigation" in his column, Novak could no longer position himself above the fray. Henceforth, "no comment" would not be an acceptable answer.

It was great to see Novak explode, but it would have been nice to see him squirm a little too.