Why Rove wasn't indicted

Seth Abramson, a criminal attorney who writes the outstanding Suburban Ectstasies blog, has the brain candy. It's an easy three-step explanation showing how prosecutorial trial strategy, and not Rove's innocence, was the reason "Turd Blossom" escaped federal prosecution, but let's skip right to the smackdown:

Conclusion. Any competent lawyer will tell you that Rove got off on Perjury/Obstruction of Justice charges because the case against Scooter Libby was infinitesimally stronger than the case against Rove, and thus Fitzgerald went with the stronger prosecution over the weaker. (For the analysis of an incompetent attorney, see here). This doesn't mean that Rove is innocent, of course. In fact, it doesn't even mean Fitzgerald thinks he couldn't convict Rove. It means only this: that if Fitzgerald thinks he has a 95% or greater chance of convicting Libby, he must, therefore, think that he has a 94% or less chance of convicting Rove. So, it's simple trial strategy at work here, not anything the Porcine Wonder did. Don't let the media mislead you into thinking the lack of a Rove indictment means the case against him was weak. It wasn't. It isn't. It never will be. Which is why Rove will lose his shirt in the civil suit that's coming down the line any day now.

Perhaps I'll save that bottle of bubbly I was chilling for Fitzmas after all ...