The vengefully insignificant are hoping to rampage
Two and a half days of jury deliberations, and they're already coming out of the woodwork
By Margie Burns on 2/23/2007, 5:34pm PT  

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by Libby/CIA Leak Trial Correspondent Margie Burns

Conventional wisdom is that when a jury spends much time deliberating, it will find a defendant not guilty. After two and a half days deliberating, the jury in the Libby trial went home today for the weekend.

So the rightwing noise machine thinks it smells blood and is starting some early gloating. Here, for example, is Rush Limbaugh --- premature but already tasteless: “So Fitzpatrick is sweating it out. Fitzrussert sweating it out. Fitzmatthews is sweating it out. Nobody knows what it means that the jury has yet to come back. Fitzsulzberger at the New York Times is probably sweating this out just a little bit.”

I don’t have time to rebut the kind of dishonesty that would connect the excellent and dedicated Special Prosecutor in the Libby trial, Patrick Fitzgerald, with NBC and the New York Times. I heard closing arguments in the trial last Tuesday and have not changed my own opinion that the prosecution rebuttal by Fitzgerald was awesome. Phenomenal. ...

Quite possibly Limbaugh knows it, too; a federal judge – as it happens – named Limbaugh originally hailed from exactly Rushworth L III’s neck of the woods in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and Limbaugh is reportedly not the unlettered clod he makes himself out to be on air for the sake of enticing more millions from the genuinely ignorant. When Limbaugh goes on the attack, it’s usually because there is a foeman more than worthy of his steel – inconveniently standing between him and his perpetual effort to assist the redistribution of all wealth to the wealthy and the concentration of all power into the hands of the few.

That said, neither I nor anyone else can predict the outcome in a jury trial. However, celebration by the grossly otiose at this stage would be premature, and some of the people who know it are Libby and his attorneys, who spend several careful minutes smiling for the cameras on the sidewalk, every time they exit the J. Prettyman federal courthouse. Attorney Theodore Wells has been heard to remind his client and entourage to put their smiley faces on before stepping outdoors.

Not many people in the federal courts system will be influenced by commentators like Limbaugh and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. But their kind are likely to try to use this weekend to make hay by influencing more reputable news media. I'm not the only reader to wonder whether the Washington Post, for example, is trawling for a mistrial. If the jury deliberations are a sign of anything, they may be a sign of deadlock on some counts, but even that is too early to predict.

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