For those who have been pushing the credibility of Ambassador Joseph Wilson and pushing for Karl Rove's takedown over the Plame kerfuffle, the events of the past couple of weeks have offered them new life.

Josh Marshall, the 60 Minutes consultant and liberal blogger, has been front and center and today offers this:

If they can plausibly claim that they thought she was simply a paper-pusher, then the statute would not apply to them.

But I think any enterprising reporter will be able to see why this is almost certainly not true. A close look at the wording Novak used in his column and a careful review of previous Novak columns over the years shows he only ever uses the word 'operative' to refer to covert agents. And that's the word he used to refer to Plame.

For Marshall, the phrase "careful review" must exclude the verb "Google." Because here are some Novak quotes that you find when you Google Novak+operative+site:www.townhall.com:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's campaign scored a political victory, with the help of his newly named labor operative, by stopping the AFL-CIO's immediate endorsement of Rep. Richard Gephardt for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And:

Old Republican hands Bob Dole and John Engler thought they had seen it all in politics, but that was before they watched votes being "counted" in south Florida. They were stunned ("radicalized, " said one GOP operative) as Bush campaign observers experiencing a Democratic recount.

And:

The official Bush position is neutrality. But one Republican state chairman from a Midwestern state who had supported the Delaware Plan told me of receiving information by this circuitous route: he had been advised by his governor that he was told by a senior Bush operative in Austin that the campaign would like to see this decision put off beyond the Philadelphia convention.

And:

Trippi had not been engaged in such an effort since 1988, but he is a rare political operative today who always appreciated the potential of New Hampshire and Iowa.

(Emphasis added in each case.)

And if that's not enough, Novak explained himself his use of the word "operative" in his Plame column:

I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years.

Yes, Novak only ever uses the word "operative" to talk about covert operations, except when he uses it to describe something else.

You can sense that they can almost taste it, but a reach is still a reach. And Marshall's "operative" point is a reach.