Plame Gossip - not really

No real Plame gossip today. A couple reports of Fitzgerald carefree about town. Jos pointed me to one in the NY Daily News and there was another in this Reuters piece.

"He was very friendly and he looked happy. He was very relaxed," one of the owners of the shop said, adding: "The shoe shine guy doesn't ask questions. Customers have a right to privacy."

A few blocks away, both Rove and Libby reported to work as usual, officials said.

Like the sting in that piece. Laughing and relaxed, that's the message Fitzgerald is trying to send out.

All the plea deals were probably discussed yesterday and today, all pressure has already been applied through media leaks. The deadline for deals was probably sometime late today. So not much to talk about. I would wager that there will be indictments tomorrow, but that another grand jury will be empanelled to further look into the WMD lies based on any late plea deals and the delayed Miller testimony. If that's the case, most of the indictments may be sealed, so we may know the who's, but not the what's and why's.

The absolute consensus seems to be that tomorrow there will be an announcement, and that Libby will be indicted, as will Rove on lesser charges.(unless they made a deal. Rumor is, Rove was looking for no jail time.)

Until then, I don't know what else to say.

Oh, except that we should get a really good Bush speech sometime late tomorrow. Think he'll take questions?

Be sure to check out the post below, as well as the connections in the Niger forgeries case further down, to understand why I believe that a second grand jury will be empanelled. Somebody is sniping at Cheney and leading the press, and plausibly the prosecutor, right down the path.

I remember one of the less flattering descriptions used to describe Colin Powell shortly after he had his first policy battle with Cheney/Rumsfeld was as "a very good close-in political knife fighter." Tell me that next post doesn't look like the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force with a clear objective.

(Oh, and a quick note. When the announcement comes, I'm not even gonna try to postfor awhile. If the Mier's withdrawal this morning is any indication, Blogger will probably completely bog down. I guess that's the price I pay for free service..)

Later...

Let me just add that a contributory element to my Powell theory is the rumor I heard today that the three candidates to replace Cheney who are being discussed are Rice, McCain, and Powell. I know, Colin Powell going back into this administration would seem a strange political move, but he could go back as a reformer who is going to clean up the administration and take the party back from those extremists who took the country to war. Don't see how it's true, but that's what made me think of Colin Powell in the context of two of his close buddies (Wilkerson and Scowcroft) turning on Cheney and then the leaks in the next post for a one, two, three.