Right-wing blogger Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters gives a “tortured explanation” of how he thinks that John Kerry’s statements today on This Week are supportive of Mary McCarthy, who was “fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth.” Captain Ed misses the point that Kerry is making…

“… that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie.”

As Kerry points out, firing McCarthy for telling the truth, “underscores what’s really wrong in Washington, DC” and if she did break the law, then she needs to “suffer the consequences of breaking the law,” just like those in the White House need to do for outing Valerie Plame.

The WaPo’s Walter Pincus reports in the Monday edition that “Key Democratic legislators yesterday joined Republicans in saying they do not condone the alleged leaking of classified information that led to last week’s firing of a veteran CIA officer. But they questioned whether a double standard exists that lets the White House give reporters secretly declassified information for political purposes.” Pincus further points to Kerry’s statements on This Week, quoting Kerry, “Classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people.” Pincus then pointed out that Kerry drew “a parallel to the Plame case,” with his statements on This Week.

Right or wrong, in the way it was done, Mary McCarthy allegedly told the truth. Valerie Plame, on the other hand, did nothing, but her husband Joe Wilson told the truth, and she paid the price for that by having her undercover status outed by someone in the White House. What’s good for Mary McCarthy is good for whoever outed Valerie Plame – that was John Kerry’s point today and he made that very clear.

The NY Times reports on the “Tighter Secrecy Within the C.I.A, ” which lends itself to the culture of keeping a lid on the truth, a la Bush administration style. In his speech yesterday at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, John Kerry spoke on the dangers of an administration that suppresses dissent. Kerry said:

“The patriotic obligation to speak out becomes even more urgent when politicians refuse to debate their policies or disclose the facts. And even more urgent when they seek, perversely, to use their own military blunders to deflect opposition and answer their own failures with more of the same.”

There is a clear level of double-standards held by the Bush administration. As Kerry said yesterday, “According to the Bush-Cheney Doctrine, smearing administration critics is not only permissible, but necessary—and revealing the identity of a CIA agent is an acceptable means to hide the truth.”

“Truth is the American bottom line,” Kerry said yesterday, and “Truth above all is fundamental to who we are.” The Bush administration has broken the American bottom line, squandered the truth for the sake of covering up their lies and deceit. It’s time to hold them accountable, there can no longer be double standards.

Glenn Greenwald makes mincemeat out of the right-wingers “screeching about the Mary McCarthy story” here, and Josh Marshall also makes some good points here.

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