Hmm...this could be fun...

...I've been trying hard not to get my hopes up about this, but...DAMN.

WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff lied and destroyed a note showing Cheney's early involvement.

Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, in 2003 that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation.

“But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,” Fitzgerald said, “he made up a story.”

...Also, the trial will show, apparently, that it was Cheney who first told Libby that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, and that Cheney wrote detailed notes of what Libby was to say in a crucial meeting with a reporter (Judy Miller? He didn't say.)

...As I typed this, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter came on camera to wonder why Cheney is not an unindicted co-conspirator and that Cheney is "a notch about Spiro Agnew as worst vice president in American history." The anchor said she wouldn't "quibble" with the assessment.

With this news, we would have to speculate that the impeachment of Dick Cheney in the new Democratic House is a very, very real possibility. There are significant pros and cons, politically, but it may prove an effective way to keep the White House in check without tearing the nation apart. Perhaps this explains the Negroponte/Condoleezza Rice manuevers, to clear the decks for a new VP.

I had done well in distracting myself from Fitzgerald's investigation and the Libby trial...but I guess I have to admit now that my hopes are officially up.