Some safe bets:
• At least one reporter will lead with a description of Libby’s lawyer Wells tearing up as he delivered his last lines.
• No one will be able to make much sense of what those last lines were; as near as I could tell, they were “I’ve been protecting him for a month. Give him back to me … [sob] Give him back to me.
• Bloggers will get all sighy about Fitzgerald’s self-deprecating humor. (“I’m going to look through my book and pretend that I know what I’m doing.”)
• Wells contention that “I must have been drunk” when he delivered his opening statement will go uncontested.
• There will be a Daily Show joke about the fate of one of the men behind the Patriot Act having to rely on the wimpy civil rights notion of “innocent until proven guilty.”
• Someone will write an oped about how the Iraq war finally came center stage in the last day. (A personal favorite: Libby’s lawyer asking the jury not to punish the defendant just because they don’t like the war… What’s the opposite of “jury nullification”?)
• Tim Russert will make the defense quote about him being “the most important journalist in television” his screensaver. (And Maureen Dowd will frame the copy she gets of her “National House of Waffles” column defiled by the Veep’s own scribbled talking points.)
Will try to write something more thoughtful tomorrow. The jury has not finished getting its instructions, but the trial-trial is over, and the jury should start deliberating by lunch tomorrow.
UPDATE: Oh, yeah, the 800-pound gorilla. Was hoping to hide him under the desk until tomorrow (so I have something to write about), but seeing as how he’ll lead the stories that don’t use Wells crying… Ah, well: Cheney got a star turn in both closing arguments, with the defense kinda using him as a stand in for how IMPORTANT AND BUSY Scooter was and the government coming out with what we all know is true. I’ll let Fitz explain (not exact t’script, sorry I don’t write fast enough…):
The defense says we’ve tried to put a cloud over the Vice President. Let’s talk straight — there is a cloud over the Vice President… And that cloud remains because the defendant lied about evidence and obstructed justice.
Cue flags, streamers.
