"Fair game"?

The Bush Administration's hubris has finally caught up with it. After three years of bullying the world, stiff-arming the United Nations, and smearing domestic opponents, it might have felt like it could get away with anything.

But outing an undercover CIA officer was just too much. After former Ambassador Joseph Wilson dared to go public with information that Bush distorted the intelligence on Iraq, someone in the Bush White House gave a leak to conservative columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife was an undercover officer. Novak dutifully published it. According to The Washington Post, at least six members of the media received calls from two White House officials eager to disclose her name. By blowing her cover, the leakers wanted to warn other potential critics to keep their mouths shut, Wilson believes.

Wilson said he talked with one reporter who had just gotten off the phone with the White House. The reporter relayed the message that Karl Rove says "your wife's fair game."

Rove, Bush's senior political adviser, denies he is one of the leakers. But no matter who the White House leakers are, they were acting like Nixon's White House Plumbers.

This is a profoundly serious scandal. There are thugs in the White House.