Rush Limbaugh Falls for Valerie Plame

It's amazing how lust affects men. Fearsome behemoths become docile lambs in the presence of a comely lass. Hostile professors speak sweetly before a ravishing female student. And love-stricken conservative commentators throw caution to the wind, as did Rush Limbaugh when he got a good look at Valerie Plame last week.

After a withering analysis of Ms. Plame's Congressional testimony during a March 16, 2007 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh bizarrely ended his monologue as follows:

"This woman is a babe. This woman is a babe, and if she weren't married, I don't care what she's done or what her political affiliation is, I'd be throwing my hat in the ring."

Throwing his hat in the ring? I didn't know that being a suitor was an elective office.

The transcript of Limbaugh's program can be found on his website at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_031607/content/01125101.guest.html .

The CIA leak case is a political circus that should never have been litigated, which may explain why Rush decided to have some fun on the airwaves.

The blonde and beautiful Valerie Plame is a former CIA agent who was "outed" in a July 14, 2003 column by Robert Novak. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was sent by the CIA to Niger on a fact-finding mission to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to purchase "yellowcake" uranium from that west African nation.

Wilson reported that the allegations, repeated by President Bush in a State of the Union address, were false. To this day, Wilson maintains that Valerie Plame's status was leaked by the Bush Administration as part of a vendetta against him.

This affair has spawned many complex subplots and produced a perjury conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Yet no one was ever prosecuted for the leak itself.

During her March 16, 2007 testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Ms. Plame insisted that she was a "covert agent" and that her status was "recklessly" divulged by White House operatives bent on revenge against her husband.

But under questioning by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), Ms. Plame admitted that nobody ever told her that she was covert. And Victoria Toensing, a deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan and an author of the Covert Agent Identities Protection Act, testified that Ms. Plame does not fit the definition of "covert" under that statute.

According to Ms. Toensing, the 1982 Act says that in order for an agent to be covert, she must have had a foreign assignment within five years of the date of disclosure of her identity, and the government had to be trying to conceal her status. Ms. Toensing added that in order to violate the statute, the leaker must have known that the agent was indeed covert.

Valerie Plame had been working at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia for years when Novak's column was published.

Yet during her testimony, which I watched on C-Span, Ms. Plame insisted that she was still "covert". When pressed, she said that she didn't know whether she was covert under the meaning of the statute, but added that once designated covert, agents remain covert, whether or not they are still overseas.

At this point, Valerie wasn't making much sense, and I started to mentally tune her out. But, indulging my inner teenager, I kept watching her.

Ms. Plame was short on logic but long on earnestness. The CIA's loss is the media's gain. She has a future in television or movies, if she wants one. I'm sure Playboy would welcome her with outstretched arms. Then she'd really be an open book. Hey, Hillary, better keep Bill on a short leash.

Sexual attraction is fun, but it makes men stupid. Sitcoms have been mining this treasure-trove for years.

Last weekend, there was a "Three's Company" marathon on TVLand. In every episode, physical comedian John Ritter literally fell head-over-heels for every pretty, voluptuous lady he saw.

A scene from the 1960s "Dick Van Dyke Show" featured Van Dyke's character, Rob Petrie, as a juror bolting out of his courtroom seat to engage in gymnastics over a handkerchief dropped by a busty blonde witness. The introduction to the 1970s "Odd Couple" series began with an entranced Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) almost getting hit by a taxi after following a Manhattan hottie into a crosswalk.

Similar things happen in real life.

I've seen more than one near-crackup on the Belt Parkway during the summer when male motorists stare at scantily clad women sunning themselves on the side of the road.

Bill O'Reilly makes no bones about his admiration of the female form. His shapely guests on "The Factor" have included exotic dancers and ex-porn star Mary Carey, who ran for governor of California in the 2003 Gray Davis recall election. During Ms. Carey's appearance on his program, O'Reilly remarked that she had "certainly opened" his "eyes wide." You can bet that he wasn't talking about her policy proposals.

About 10 years ago, I sat next to a gorgeous brunette model on a cross-continental jet. When I saw her again in the airport before returning home, I switched flights--and my destination from JFK to LaGuardia--so that I could continue talking to her. We spoke for hours before I learned that she was married. Brilliant, huh?

At least I had the consolation of seeing her on a VO5 commercial a few days later.

Even sedate conservative pundit Bill Kristol was so taken with telegenic Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the Fox News broadcast of President Bush's 2007 State of the Union speech that he gushed that Ms. Pelosi was "a significant upgrade" from outgoing Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert.

I suppose it's okay for a guy to make public pronouncements with a little help from his private appendage, as long as he's careful. Kristol was under control. I'm not so sure about Rush.

Lock the prettiest, most powerful liberal women in America in a room with the most influential conservative American men and the partisan bickering paralyzing this country would disappear overnight. But first, make sure you turn off the electricity and order plenty of pizza.

Female cleavage beats political cleavage any day of the week.

Victoria Toensing has written a cogent column about the absurdity of the Plame game in the February 18, 2007 edition of the Washington Post, available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021601705.html?referrer=emailarticleloadofarmitage.htm .

Contrary to Ms. Plame's assertions, there is no evidence that covert operations were harmed, or that lives were endangered by the disclosure of her identity. If what Ms. Plame said was true, argues Ms. Toensing, many others would have been prosecuted, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, identified by Mr. Novak as his source; former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, named by Washington Post writer Walter Pincus as also outing Valerie Plame; and White House political advisor Carl Rove, who exposed Valerie Plame to then-Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, as reported on July 18, 2006 in Newsweek.

The Newsweek article is available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/ .

In fact, Ms. Plame's status as a CIA employee was known in Washington circles for years. She wasn't "covert" under any rational definition of the word, let alone a narrow legal one.

Still, there was Valerie on television, in all her photogenic pulchritude, intrepidly defending the indefensible. Facts aside, she was very convincing. If Valerie announced in a hall full of young single men that she was sired by Thomas Jefferson's ghost, they'd probably believe her. Ditto for Rush.

And what of poor Scooter Libby? He was convicted of lying about something that didn't happen. I won't be shedding any tears for him, though.

During his testimony in Federal court, Libby said that he could not recall many events. At first blush, he seemed sympathetic, but it is an established principle of law that if it is unreasonable for a witness to forget or be unaware of something, a jury can infer that he's lying. Apparently it did so in Libby's case.

The coverup is usually worse than the crime, or non-crime. Just ask Martha Stewart.

Maybe I should have more sympathy for Scooter. Who knows? He might have been hanging out with Valerie Plame. A man can forget a lot with a woman like that. Even Rush Limbaugh temporarily lost his ideology in a hot Plame-induced hormonal fog.