Sorry folks, the internet was out all day yesterday.

It looks like Fitzgerald has started to take some heat and attempt a tactical retreat. He must have been assessing Libby’s defense claim that his mandate is unconstitutional and learned the cold hard truth: the defense is right:

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing the description of his powers in an effort to counter calls for dismissal of the criminal case he brought against Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, defense lawyers said Friday.

In a 24-page filing in federal court, the legal team for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby said Fitzgerald and the former Justice Department official who appointed him, James Comey, are changing the broad mandate the prosecutor was handed to probe the leak in the Valerie Plame affair.

Too bad – too late. As with any prosecution, any evidence gathered under illegal process and procedure is inadmissable in court. If his position was illegal and he was given powers he should not have been given and he was not under review, everything is tainted.

The defense attorneys say assignment of unsupervised and undirected power to Fitzgerald requires that he be relieved of his duties in the investigation and that all actions he has taken be voided.

Since Fitzgerald is acting on his own to correct his position, he has just stipulated that the defense is correct. It will be interesting to see if this case dies like this. I for one want to see a trial and expose all the media hypocrisy and lies, as well as Fitzgerald’s prosecutorial abuses.