Why I'm Not Writing About You-Know-Who

I'm not writing about why some unnamed White House Official should be fired, because, like all the people who are writing about him, I don't know the all facts. Any of them. Or the law. Much of it. And reading scores of editorials, articles, o'spinion, source documents and blogs on the subject hasn't fully enlightened me.

But I do know this first hand. I have two siblings, let's call them a brother and a sister, who have been undercover law enforcement "operatives." I don't know much about what they've done or what they're doing now, and they don't say much. I do know they went places where they wouldn't be known and used other names. They might have pretended to possess information they didn't really have to trick people into spilling the beans. They would fight subterfuge with subterfuge.

That's how I understand these things work.

Now, unlike Joseph Wilson, who has only one wife, I have four brothers and one sister. You don't know their names, of course, so if you passed on this information you wouldn't be outing them, would you? You wouldn't be naming them. And their service was in the past, as far as we know, so you wouldn't be endangering them, right? And if you were a high-level official who confirmed something to a New York Times reporter who seemed to be fishing offhand for a confirmation of something he already knew, what's the harm in that? So what if it supported a story that would would be politically advantageous to you?

That's no crime.

On today's outrage scale, surely not as bad as losing money on some land in the Ozarks or knowing lesbians in college. But I'm not writing about that either.

I'm just hoping those two unnamed siblings, let's call them a brother and a sister, understand how reticent I have been in the matter. And how innocent of any crime.