Gullible's Travails: Edition 2

Hardball just did a segment on Rove's bean-spilling. It concluded with a discussion including Matthews, Isikoff, and David Gregory (who teed off on Scott McClellan today...finally). Now they are doing a thing with EJ Dionne and Deborah Orin.

The intro to the Isikoff-Gregory segment was a backgrounder by David Shuster, who really managed to bungle it on two issues:

1. Shuster said that Rove wouldn't be in any legal jeopardy if he didn't "identify" Wilson's wife to Cooper or others. This is a patently ridiculous thing to say, as I've discussed here, here, and here (and maybe elsewhere), and it is a gullible regurgitation of the Rove-Luskin Clintonian attempt to suggest that the name "Plame" is the key information.
2. Shuster said that Rove wouldn't have violated "Federal law" unless he knew that Plame/Wilson was undercover. This is an accurate paraphrasing of the IIPA, but it ignores the Espionage Act, as discussed at length by Mark Kleiman.

For parroting the rightwing line -- knowingly or not -- David Shuster wins our second Gullible's Travails award.