Friday, in an editorial captioned "Conrad Black's Revenge", discussing the Supreme Court's haircut of the "honest services" prosecution of Conrad Black by Patrick Fitzgerald, the Wall Street Journal's editors said:

The Black reversal is another blot on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who has previously abused legal process in his extrajudicial public declarations against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former Illinois Governor Blagojevich. In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald gave reporters the impression at a news conference that Mr. Libby had obstructed his ability to find out who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame when he already knew the leaker was Richard Armitage. This was a decpetive attempt to poison media and public opinion againt Mr. Libby.

The Black and Skilling cases are precisely the kin involving high-rofile, unsympathetic defendants in which willful prosecutors like Mr. Fitzgerald are inclined to abuse the honest services law.