From last night’s Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On the Surge—

FRED BARNES: Now, I think the most important thing I’ve seen is not what Bob Gates said or not what the president said that was cautiously optimistic about Iraq, in his speech to the American Legion, yesterday. . . . It is what Brian Williams said, of NBC. You know, there’re not a lot of reporters who have been over there and then gone back and gone to the same places and looked around, and Brian Williams said two things. One, it is better. Things are better in Baghdad. The surge appears to be off to a good start. And secondly, he said that something that Democrats refuse to admit and that is that it is a new strategy. It’s different, what the troops are doing.
. . . Nancy Pelosi and all the Democrats pretend like, well, this is just more of the same. Well, there are more troops, but it is not the same strategy. And that, of course, is the reason why it’s beginning to work.
Look, Brian Williams has no reason to say this if is not true. Bob Gates does have a reason to say that things are getting better, he works for the Bush administration, they want to say that. But Brian Williams is no tool of the Bush administration.

—On the Libby Case—

MORT KONDRACKE: [The] Washington Post editorial . . . is perfectly wonderful, about how this case besmirches everybody who touched it — that Wilson is a blowhard and a liar. That Libby clearly lied under oath, that the administration misused information and that Fitzgerald probably never should have brought the case. And we didn’t learn anything about Iraq. So, it’s a great piece of work.
But look, I think that this whole case is another rancid example of a rancid custom in Washington and that is the criminalization of politics and the worst example of it, that I’ve seen in my time in Washington, is the impeachment of Bill Clinton. And this is, you know, the ruination of Scooter Libby. . . . it’s the criminalization of political opposition and it was a low crime and misdemeanor that was treated as a high crime.