Posted 12:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

If I were studying sociology or anthropology I'd drop everything right now and run to Washington, DC. There's a great piece to be written about what Scooter Libby's defenders reveal about that city's power elite. (Think Mean Girls meets All the President's Men.) What an opportunity: The response to a perceived attack on one of the tribe is revealing a hidden culture to the world.

Social scientists will tell you that most communities are divided into at least two groups, insiders and interlopers. Washington is no exception. "He came in and trashed the place," David Broder famously wrote of Bill Clinton, "and it wasn't his place." It's Scooter Libby's place, though. He's part of the capital's power elite, a culture with its own social hierarchy, folkways, and shared beliefs