1 Boring Old Man

from Jane Hamsher:

… He was a very thoughtful guy who said the jury was very serious and took their responsibility very seriously, and that there were many tears at the end.

… He said that this was true and that the first thing they did was fill out 34 or so of the huge "post it" pads (2′ x 3′) with names, dates and details.

… He said the other jurors may want to talk to the press at some point but for now they did not want to be identified. He was very impressed with how methodical they were and he used the word "dispassionate" to describe their deliberations. He said they deliberated for a whole week before they reached a verdict on any of the charges.

… He eventually got dragged before the cameras and said that there was a lot of compassion on the jury for Libby, that they felt he was the"fallguy," and they wanted to know where Karl Rove was in all of this.

… He was loathe to answer questions about Dick Cheney beyond the fact that Libby was obviously doing whatever he did at Cheney’s behest, and the Cheney notes on the Wilson July 6 article seemed especially damning.

… He did say that Hannah’s testimony totally screwed Libby, and I got a chuckle out of that. At the same time Hannah was talking about how bad Libby’s memory was, he also claimed that Libby had an incredible grasp of detail, and the jury believed he just would not have forgotten so much in the way that the defense was trying to claim.

… They found Russert to be a credible witness but thought there was enough reasonable doubt in the Cooper false statement charge (he said/he said) for "someone" to assume reasonable doubt. It appears there was only one holdout on Count Three that kept Libby from a 5 count grand slam.

On her own blog, Jane Hamsher said, " It’s a good day to be an American, huh?" Well put. Myself, I’m a little speechless. I’m not sure what I feel, except relieved that I’m not feeling what I’d feel if the decision had gone the other way – an emotion that I’ve come to call the election night 2004 feeling, because I’ve only felt it once in my life. Mostly, I wonder what the people who elected President Bush and opened the door for this cadre of neoconservatives are feeling about all of this. They didn’t pore over the minute to minute testimony in the trial from emptywheel‘s daily live-blog. They haven’t read Libby’s notes, or seen the annotations on the newspaper articles, or parsed the timeline of leak week. They don’t know first-hand the levels of deceit, deviousness, and vengfulness that was presented as fact in this trial. All they know is the verdict. I hope in the days that follow, the Media finally puts this information on the front page for everyone to deal with. "News" is literally what is new. For most of us Plame junkies, this is a very old story. For most Americans, it’s brand new.