No Argument Too Stupid

The eminent logicians over at NRO's The Corner, in the course of a few hours today, managed to resurrect the two stupidest arguments that have so far been offered in connection with the leakgate scandal (and that says a lot).

First, Cliff May dredged up his own pet theory on the Plame case: that David Corn, not Bob Novak first outed plame publicly. This mind-numbingly stupid argument rests on the assertion that you have to say the world "covert" in order to expose a covert agent. Since Novak never indicated that Plame was covert, apparently no real damage was done. By that rationale, if I revealed that someone posing as member of an organized crime family was actually a cop, it wouldn't do any harm, at least as long as I made sure not to mention that the person was an "undercover" cop. Is Cliff May really that dumb? Is anyone? This argument is so dumb that even the wingnut community hasn't run with it. Not even Ken Mehlman has bothered to repeat it. That's pretty dumb.

But not to be outdone, John Podhoretz makes the following mind-bogglingly stupid observation:

"Once again there's something weird going on
when we learn Novak found Valerie Plame's name
in Wilson's 'Who's Who in America' entry. We've
known Wilson used her name in his online bio.
Simple logic requires one to ask why he would expose
her in this fashion by going public with his own
authored of-ed if it might endanger her life."

Podhoretz has it all figured out. Wilson outed his own wife by mentioning that he was married to her. Someone get Fitzgerald on the phone. Podhoretz is either being criminally disingenuous here, or he is dumber than a sack of rocks. Obviously, it was no secret that Joseph Wilson was married to someone named Valerie Plame. The secret, as any four-year-old could explain to Podhoretz, was that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, a fact which was not a part of Wilson's online bio. That level of stupidity really should be painful.