Well, here I am, at quarter to six on a Friday, indictmentless. Which forces me to write….

THIS WEEK IN SPECULATION

The week began with The New York Times’ huge two-story account of its strange involvement in the CIA leak case—an account that only raised more questions, given that one of the stories, by a team of respected Times reporters, directly contradicted portions of the other Times story, which was by Judith Miller, a not so respected Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for reasons that are still murky.

(The whole fiasco came a bit full circle this afternoon, whith the leaking of a memo by Time Executive Editor Bill Keller, in which he accuses Miller of misleading The Times and says he wishes he had been less credulous in dealing with her. Which is about as close as the genteel Times gets to saying: Fuck you.)

After the Times stories were chewed over, the week saw more and more and more stories pointing toward Dick Cheney’s office as the source of the leak, and lots of speculation about what the Veep might be forced to do.

Until next week…

If you are finding yourself in need of a good primer on the complicated cast of characters now involved in this mess, click here.

If you want a juicy new development from late today, click here.

And if you want some light reading, click here. (And get comfy with this site—by next week it’s likely to have indictments posted on it.)