The second half-hour of "Brian Lamb Friday" on C-SPAN today featured the Washington Post editorial, "End of an Affair: It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband." Asking the question: "Did any of this matter?" Brian read the entire piece on air (and you should read it all as well).

An excerpt:

"Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously."

A few remarks about the Post:

I continue to disagree with the Washington Post plenty. But it is increasingly clear to me that the paper is dedicated to maintaining a unique degree of objectivity in the more and more partisan climate of American journalism today. The Post is clearly the best-written, most balanced and most centrist of the great national newspapers.

Moreover, I suspect that very soon we will begin to hear the charge that the Post has "sold out" in order to curry favor with, and tap into, the increasingly important conservative consumer economy. When that happens, Americans should rally around the Post.