Obviously, the Lim-Brosz-es of the world are hopping up and down screaming about Bush Hating, and the Paul Begalas of the world are screaming 'indict, impeach, treason!' at to top of their lungs. The minions of Conservative Vents are in rare form on this one.

I don't quite get it. The Paul Begala's AREN'T engaged in "Bush hating?" Short of actually throwing rocks at Bush, what else would they have to do to demonstrate it to your satisfaction?

The Novak piece was from a preliminary transcript of Monday's Crossfire, and can be found here. I am irritated that nobody but me (to my knowledge) has seen fit to link back to this, especially Drudge, who should know better. The whole conversation is more useful than the single excerpt, which I have seen parsed to the point of silliness.*

The rest of your post has some good insights, and I have seen similar questions elsewhere in various articles and blogs. Your attitude about what should be done about people who blow CIA covers raises you, as usual, above the run-of-the-mill Left, which used to deliberately "out" agents during the 1970s and were lauded for it.

To explain the difference in the two articles, it's possible Novak learned what Plame's exact job at the CIA was since he wrote the first article, but I have no evidence to prove this. As I read the excerpt, the discussion he had with the CIA was separate from the one he had with the anonymous officials, so he was not trying to blur the two.

If Novak is such a complete administration buttmonkey, why did he write the article in the first place?