"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote in the 41-page decision.
"But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism ... by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties," he added.

I'm going to respond to this with two very different comments.

First, if the dismissal is on jurisdictional grounds, then the above quote has no business as part of the opinion. Either the court has jurisdiction or it does not, but that statement is not part of any jurisdictional question I can think of.

Second, that statement does have application if the dismissal were on the grounds the case were brought, but ignores the issues of the case. The response of the administration (in the form of leaking the identity of Ms. Plame by Armitage, Rove, Libby and Fleisher) was not a rebuttal of any of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson, it was instead a smear of the Ambassador and the destruction of Ms. Plame's career. While the first certainly qualifies as "unsavory," the leak was most likely illegal, and at no point was there any rebuttal of the criticism. The leak group didn't say what Ambassador Wilson said was false or that they had information that said otherwise, they turned his report and the trip that report was based on into a junket sponsored by his wife at CIA, and that if people want to take information from that sort of source well go ahead.

They already had the original report Wilson had filed with the government blowing the yellowcake story out of the water, they just ignored it because it hurt their case for a war they wanted. They knew it was right. Because they couldn't counter the message, they went after the messenger. The point of the suit was to determine if that was done falsely.

Now, given the standards applied by the Judge in this case, were I to say, "Judge Bates is a Bush tool who ruled this way in this case because W put him on the bench as a payoff for the work he did with Ken Starr trying to bury Clinton for a blowjob," then that would be perfectly acceptable. It would be perfectly acceptable if I were in the administration, because speaking with members of the press is just dandy. I don't have to rebut the opinion, Bates doesn't find that a requirement. I could freely say Bates is a corrupt judge who got the assignment in this case because he's known to be a loyal Bushie who got his job from Bushie and was chosen for that job because he went after blowjob Bill.

At least that's what the standard looks like...

I have not read the opinion because I haven't found a link to it yet, but I'll update after I have.

UPDATE: Well I have now read the opinion and I wonder if I can get it perforated, on Charmin quality paper stock. Part of the opinion is a dismissal on jurisdictional grounds, sort of, vaguely, but the primary issue for dismissal is that remedy is being sought under the wrong grounds. What also appears to be stated is that it is not relevant whether or not what Libby, Rove, Cheney and Armatige did was illegal or not, the fact that it may or may not have been illegal precludes pressing a civil case! It might be illegal, therefore it can't be sued for!

Wow.

UPDATE 2: This is the same judge who ruled that the GAO couldn't find out who was on Cheney's energy group, and was placed on the FISA court by Roberts last year. Yeesh.

Well. You just said it better than I ever could have. I saw that, and surely tilted my head like a dog hearing a siren. WTF.
I always said "The courts are the hope of the country." Lately I dunno about that. They are like a stacked deck.