argument.
.... Lewis ¡°Scooter¡± Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove of violating the couple¡¯s rights to free speech, privacy and equal protection by conspiring to reveal Plame¡¯s CIA identity, ostensibly in revenge for Wilson¡¯s criticisms of the reasons for the Iraq war. The filing came on the same day that Robert Novak, whose syndicated column first reported that Plame was with the CIA, revealed that Rove was one of his sources for the information. The Supreme Court has ruled that Presidents have immunity and that cabinet officers have ¡°qualified immunity,¡± meaning that they cannot be sued unless, for example, they violated someone¡¯s constitutional rights and had a pretty good idea they were doing so. That leaves open the question of whether Vice Presidents get immunity, but the consensus among constitutional scholars is that they do, so Cheney lucks out. As behind-the-scenes guys, Rove and Libby probably get only qualified immunity, which means they¡¯ll have to show that the complaint fails to state any legal claims, if they want to get rid of it quickly. And they may succeed on some counts. Plame and Wilson contend, for example, that the Administration violated their free-speech rights by taking ¡°retaliatory action¡± after Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to several nations, wrote an op-ed piece questioning a central reason for attacking Iraq: President Bush¡¯s claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon. Presumably, the retaliation was the outing of Plame as a CIA official, but there¡¯s room to debate how much harm came of that act. She didn¡¯t lose her job or get demoted or suffer any other obvious damage. And even if the outing violated federal law (and there¡¯s still no evidence that it did), that wouldn¡¯t make it unconstitutional. So ¡°the claim is much weaker than the typical claim¡± of harming speech through retaliation, says Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at UCLA law school. If the judge believes the claim is weak enou...