First it was Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, who underhandedly manipulated the facts of the Scooter Libby case while chastising the Bush administration for underhandedly manipulating the facts. See my It’s a Lemann. The New Yorker has yet to publish a correction to the error that I was not alone in pointing out. It is said to have published correspondence on the matter, but I must have missed it. As I know from personal experience, it can be hard to admit a mistake.

Now we have Michael Kinsley, Dean of the Snark School of Journalism, who has a collision with himself today while talking about the case. Did he suffer a whiplash injury? Will the op-ed page of the New York Times publish a correction? As I have warned in the past, do not hold your breath waiting.

Kinsley goes after the hypocrisy of “Libbyites” who cheered when Clinton was impeached for committing perjury and who now insist that “their man is being railroaded and shouldn’t have been prosecuted, let alone convicted” for lying about whether he leaked the undercover status of Valerie Plame, the wife of the administration critic, Joseph Wilson.

Fair enough, and obvious enough. But Kinsley makes another point along the way.

When Libby was questioned by federal investigators, Kinsley writes, “[h]e could either tell the truth, thereby implicating colleagues and very possibly himself, in leaking classified security information (the identity of Mr. Wilson’s wife), or he could lie. In either case he would be breaking the law or admitting to having done so, and in either case he could have gone to prison.”

Really? Yes, says Kinsley, really.

Except until we get to his next paragraph where Kinsley turns around and says, “The law about ‘outing’ CIA operatives is apparently vague enough that it isn’t clear whether Mr. Libby violated it.”

Really? Yes, says Kinsley, really.