...Lewis Libby?

First of all, how much pleasure can I reasonably expect to gain by hating a grown man called "Scooter"? Not that I could ever like I. Lewis Libby, in whom (at present) is embodied all that is corrupt and stupid and violently vindictive and icky in our present government. 30 months in prison; that's great, I guess. Make it 30 years and what's the difference, really? Putting Libby in prison (which probably won't happen anyway) is akin to going after those privates who appeared in and took the Abu Ghraib photographs. Sure they're idiots - and much, much worse than idiots. But they hardly constitute the root of the problem.

Here is the last bit from Hazlitt's essay on hating:

"...[a]nd England, that arch-reformer, that heroic deliverer, that mouther about liberty and tool of power, stands gaping by, not feeling the blight and mildew coming over it, nor its very bones crack.... [Do] we not see hypocrisy, servility, selfishness, folly, and impudence succeed, while modesty shrinks from the encounter, and merit is trodden under foot? How often is 'the rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love to plant a blister there!' What chance is there of the success of real passion? What certainty of its continuance? Seeing all this as I do, and unravelling the web of human life into its various threads of meanness, spite, cowardice, want of feeling, and want of understanding, of indifference towards others and ignorance of ourselves - seeing custom prevail over all excellence, itself giving way to infamy - mistaken as I have been in my public and private hopes, calculating others from myself, and calculating wrong; always disappointed where I placed most reliance; the dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough."

Indeed.