Someone PLEASE help..I'm very confused

You see, the President of the United States, or his spokesman, made the following statements regarding the outing of Valerie Plame:

you believe this?

is anyone in any doubt now that the President has committed various illegal acts whilst in office ? Some that count as high crimes or misdemeanors that definately warrant impeachment.

Republicans in the House can't deny it any longer. The list will keep growing and if they want any chance of not being swept away in a tsunami of electoral disgust they had best start acting in the interests of the American people and stop serving their conglomerate paymasters.

Did Bush really think he would get away with this, or was it just easier to punt the matter until after the elections with a bald faced lie?

Was the NIE classified under the terms of the law and the presidential executive order when its contents were discussed by Libby with Miller?

If the authority for classification and declassification of information and documents derives from the EO, I doubt it (but that's just a layman's opinion). What the prez delegates, he presumably still has ultimate authority over (again, just a lay opinion). I suspect the NIE was formally announced as declassified, and released, 10 days later at presidential directive.

One DUer (another thread) made the counterclaim: the president was not authorized to declassify a document under procedures required by law for declassification, only the classifying authority has. It's unclear to me if the poster in using "by law" was asserting the existence of signed act of Congress that stipulated the process, making the executive order redundant, or if he was confusing the executive order with such an act. It's an important distinction.