You've missed the point, Tom.

The indictment suggests pretty strongly that Scooter's the perpetrator.

But like many a criminal before him, he dug the hole deeper by lying about it.

I don't know the penalty for violating the law against outing a CIA agent, but I'll bet it's less than the 30 years Scooter's facing now for lying and obstructing justice.

The law seems ambiguous anyway, in large part thanks to you Republicans busily questioning whether Plame was really a covert agent as defined by the law. Be careful what you ask for...Fitz may have calculated that proving perjury's a slam dunk (which perjury before a grand jury usually is, ya know...they keep transcripts) compared to getting a conviction on the original charge amid muddied waters.

So ya see, Tom, Scooter was for all practical purposes nailed for the crime of outing a CIA agent, the original purpose of the investigation. It's just that Fitz was smart enough to nail him for it in a way that's more likely to stick than the original definition of the crime. Fitz in his news conference today pointed out that investigators don't set out to prove violation of a specific statute, they go out looking for crime. That's how it should be.

Fitz caught the guy who outed Valerie Plame in one of the most blatant cases of naked political retribution since Watergate. Good for him.