October 24? Feels like December 23.

There has been some amazing activity out of Washington in the last few days. The lastest is from The New York Times disclosing that Scooter Libby found out about Plame from Vice-President Dick Cheney. It also appears that this was not disclosed to the Fitzgerald grand jury. That coupled with "Iceberg Judy" running into a heat wave out of almost every office in the New York Times, notably the Public Editor, and the disclosure this morning that the Italian government has given Fitzgerald a copy of their yet to be released report on the Niger Yellowcake forgeries, and suddenly I find myself remembering what it felt like to be 7 years old on December 23rd. Christmas is coming, and Pat Fitzgerald is Santa Claus. Except, he's REAL!

To put all of this in a simpler perspective, Today's disclosures paint a bullseye on Scooter Libby for any number of things, but not limited to, perjury, obstruction of justice and violations of the espionage act. It also paints the Vice-President into a similarly ugly corner, and gives an enormous amount of leverage from the Judy Miller fiasco to put to use against them. The addition of the Yellowcake forgeries to the information in Mr. Fitzgerald's hands also means that the scope of this is not just who leaked Valerie Plame and Brewster-Jennings & Associates, but has extended to such things as lying to Congress. At that point, no one is safe, including George W. Bush.

If the Yellowcake Forgeries come from someone in the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) then all bets are off, and you could see the indictment include Bush over the infamous "sixteen words" in the 2003 State of the Union speech. Now at that level, that's getting pretty speculative, I don't expect to see Bush's name in the indictments that are sure to come, but just about anyone else is fair game.

Christmas is coming and the sack Santa Fitz is trying to shove down the chimney looks huge.