“Declaration,” damn it.
Well, I read over the indictment report quickly and, from my read, it is not so odd. While it may be true that Libby was not indicted for outing the agent, it sounds like the special prosecutor was essentially saying that this is what he did. I think the issue here is that the law that covers the outing of an agent has a very high burden of proof, so the special prosecutor might have decided not to go for that charge. But, I don’t think Libby could necessarily have concluded with much certainty that what he did was legal.
Actually, this thread seems to have more discussion relevant to what I just posted, including a quote from the press conference sort of explaining why these were the charges filed.
I kinda liked ‘deceleration’ better. I thought I’d come across some new legal term of art that I’d not previously encountered! 
I suspect that I’ve been decelerating for some time now. The knees are the first to go, then the spell-check discrimination.
You could call recent events The Deceleration of Independence.
Oooh, that’s good. Please tell me it’s available under Open Public License. ^_*
Knock yerself out.
“Deceleration” had a certain metaphoric power.
What I don’t like about the situations is the false equivalency being attributed to them. Just because the charges are both perjury doesn’t mean the situations are the same. They’re not eve close. One came from a fishing expedition about personal issues that really aren’t anyone’s business but the people directly affected. The other investigation was trigger by the outing of an undercover agent (for political gain) that compromised national security. There’s a universe of difference there.
Oh, just for the fun of it, let’s add up the charges, since there are those who intend to use only that as a way to keep score.
Libby: 2 counts perjury, 2 counts making false statements, 1 count obstruction of justice, all charged in court.
Clinton: 0 charges, 1 allegation of perjury.
The winner? Come on, class, you can do it.
See how silly this argument is?
Or, you could add it up like this:
Clinton: 1 contempt citation, 1 lost bar license.
Libby: Nothing proven yet.
That being said, of course Libby’s actions, if proven, are a ton worse than Clinton’s lying under oath about his sexual affairs.
If I may expand upon the difference here:
The Constitution gives the power to declare war to The Congress and not The President so as to avoid situations where hostility arises from drummed up charges against a foreign power with no basis in fact.
The Constitution also has the following limit in it, under the clause covering spending for the army:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
No such limit appears under the clause for the Navy, since the Navy can’t be used all by itself to invade and occupy foreign nations or hold any of the states within the union under a martial law declared on fiat of the Executive. The two-year limit was put in place so that, should an appropriation for a standing army be made, said appropriation would have to be voted on again at least once by the next Congress.
In short, the writers of the Constitution did whatever they could think of to prevent the current situation, where a perpetual standing army was deployed under a drummed-up hysteria to invade and occupy a sovereign foreign power, an act which beyond its international implications has the domestic effect of increasing the power and prestige of the Executive over the other branches of the government, since in times of war the power of the Executive inevitably increases.
The Libby investigation is aimed directly at the core of the web of lies used to initiate this war. The difference between this and the Clinton impeachment is as vast and wide as the continental US itself. The latter was a private matter used by the opposition to attain a public end. The former is precisely what the writers of the Constitution would have wanted: a means to the end of limiting the power of the President to lead the nation into war on a whim and a lie. Libby understood this, which is why he lied, or better, continued to lie.