The Washington Post has been a partisan Republican rag for years or even decades, but sometimes they take it to extreme levels. One case was today's coverage of U.S. District Judge John D. Bates' dismissal of the Plame lawsuit against corrupt members of the Bush regime.

The Post omitted critical information in order to create a false air of legitimacy to the ruling. The article acknowledged that the defendants in the case revealed Ms. Plame's then-undercover identity as a CIA agent, but conveniently neglected to mention that the identity of an undercover CIA business used to monitor weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East was revealed, in addition to the identities of agents and informants who had worked with Plame while she was under cover.

This is important given the grounds that Bates used in order to dismiss the case. Bates falsely claimed that the actions of the defendants were part of their duties as government officials.

From the Washington Post article:

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote.

"But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials," Bates said.

This is a flat-out lie.

Bates is perfectly aware of the fact that illegally revealing the identities of CIA agents and covert operations could not ever possibly be “within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials.” Bates also knows that the purposes of the actions against Ms. Plame were not to rebut criticism, but to punish her husband and to intimidate other potential whistle-blowers in the government.

Why did Bates lie?

The Post omitted essential facts which make the reasons painfully obvious. The facts are not difficult to find. Two are easily found in Bates' official bio, which I readily obtained running a single Google search.

Judge Bates was appointed United States District Judge in December 2001.

He was appointed by the same administration whose highest political operatives were defendants in the lawsuit.

Judge Bates was on detail as Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to mid-1997.

Anyone involved with Ken Starr's partisan hackery is a GOP crony of the worst kind, putting partisan politics ahead of the rule of law.

Another damning fact can be found by doing just a bit more Googling.

Bates' illegally dimissed a lawsuit by the General Accounting Office to get access to records from Dick Cheney's illegal secret meetings with energy company donors on energy policy. Bates used false jurisdictional claims in that case which were somewhat similar to the false jurisdictional claims made in the Plame case.

The Post ignored this past breach of judicial trust by Bates' in pursuit of a partisan, GOP agenda, just as it ignored Bates' conflict of interest and his involvement with the highly disreputable Ken Starr. Readers of the article were led to believe that this was a perfectly normal ruling by a disinterested jurist.

Bates' actions have seriously undermined the credibility of the federal judiciary. The Post long ago sacrificed any sliver of credibility it had on the altar of partisan, Republican politics.