White House Leaker Fired-- Albeit in Fictional "West Wing"

Last night's "West Wing" was extremely well done, one of the best post-Sorkin. While long-time fans are likely be angry with the departure of Richard Schiff's character -- there since the beginning -- from the series as a regular, I think it was a long time in coming. Godspeed, Toby Ziegler, and it is my hope you stay out of the pokey and make some reappearances on the show. Maybe a fictional pardon is in your fictional future?

The most interesting aspect of all this -- to me -- is that the producers and writers seem to have craftily timed this to endgame of the Plame investigation, which is likely to make some headlines this week. I would love to see if an intrepid reporter could get to the heart of this, whether this was fortuitous timing or something more. I'm betting on the latter. Lawrence O'Donnell, care to blog about this at the Huffington Post?

It'll be interesting to see how much next week's episode of "Wing" captures what may happen this week, if I think what happens actually happens.

(Related note: Saturday saw a wonderful profile of the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, in the New York Times-- while there is not much information in there that is not already known, it captures his character quite well.)