Well, it looks like Valerie Plame’s 15 minutes of fame are just about up. A U.S. District Court judge simply dismissed her lawsuit against Bush, Cheney, Rove and Libby.

Unfortunately, we will probably have to suffer through one more appeal from her, but if she wants to spend more money on legal fees, go for it.

Joe and Valerie Wilson are mere political hacks. They were used by the Bush haters to desperately sling enough mud at the Bush administration to get something, anything, to stick, and all they were able to do was to defame an innocent man. They must be proud.

I only hope Scooter Libby has a chance to go on the offense once his successful appeal is concluded.

Valerie gave conflicting stories when testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. When asked if she, and not Dick Cheney, suggested her husband be sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger, she first said she didn’t, then she said she couldn’t recall, and then there was the inconvenient internal CIA e-mail that quoted her as saying her husband "may be able to assist."

Her husband, Joe, has plenty of conflicting statements also. As a matter of fact, he is even lower than she is.

So after all this wasted taxpayer money, what came out of the process? Scooter Libby was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to a grand jury for allegedly leaking the identity of Valerie Plame.

I agree they were serious offenses, but the penalty certainly didn’t fit the crime. He was assessed a $250,000 fine, received two years probation, will probably be disbarred, and got a 30-MONTH prison sentence.

Give me a break. Sandy Berger, former national security adviser, removed sensitive classified documents from the National Archives by stuffing them into his pants and socks, hid them at a nearby construction site, later took them home, and even destroyed some of them.

He admitted to doing so after first denying that he did in fact steal the documents. His penalty? A plea-bargained $50,000 fine, 100 hours of community service, and having his security clearance lifted for three years!

If someone can’t see the inconsistency here, he should seek out a mental health-care provider immediately.

So Scooter, former chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, was prosecuted for what?

No crime was committed since Valerie was no longer classified as being covert. How can you lie about something and obstruct justice when no crime took place?

His "lie" was his version of when a conversation took place and what was said differed from two key witnesses, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Remember, this testimony stated the meetings took place in June or July of 2003. Here’s Libby, a very busy person who has multiple meetings every day, being asked to recall what was said in 2007! You or I couldn’t do it, either. So he is guilty of the inability to recall the exact content of these conversations.

Now, when Miller testified, she stated she "had conversations with other government officials and could not be absolutely, absolutely certain that she first heard about an outed CIA official from I. �Scooter’ Libby." Pretty damning, huh?

Cooper was even more sympathetic. Libby granted him a waiver to testify (I’m certain a guilty person would do this) when Cooper asked him.

In recalling his version of the testimony, he stated in his Times article dated 10/30/05, "Basically, I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson’s wife having been involved in sending him to Niger. Libby responded with words to the effect of �Yeah, I’ve heard this too.’"

The rest of the article is pretty revealing, and I would recommend you read it. You really want this man to go to jail before his appeal rights are concluded? He should have used the Hillary selective memory strategy and simply said, "I really can’t recall." It worked for her.

So, now the Dems are all flustered about the grave miscarriage of justice that took place when President Bush simply commuted the 30-month jail sentence. I will have to do a column in the future about presidential pardons and commutations since I don’t have room here. Get over it, Dems.

Scooter Libby will appeal and have the decision reversed. If not he will be pardoned. The Bush administration will win again since once more it has truth on its side.

Best of all, those leftist liberals will have to continue pounding their heads against the wall, causing even more brain damage than they already have, since they lost again.

I think Harry Reid should demand another all-night session of the Senate. He certainly got a lot accomplished in the first one.

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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.