I. Lewis Libby managed to flee the country yesterday when Karl Rove pointed forcefully at Judge Samuel A. Alito, misdirecting the nation's attention and allowing Libby to escape. Libby is said to have flown to East Libbytonia, a small pacific island nation that he owns.

Yesterday morning, as Lewis Libby was leaving court after his arraignment on criminal charges, Rove pointed at Alito, saying, "Hey, look! A radical conservative who might well end up on the Supreme Court!" When the entire nation looked to the right, Libby ran to the far left, eventually rendezvousing with a boat that took him over the nation's western border.

Rove denied that he had aided and abetted Libby's escape. "I didn't help him anymore than I did in the CIA leak case," he said.

Libby was under indictment for lying to a grand jury under oath, among other charges, and faced up to 30 years in prison had he been convicted. (Libby was not charged with lying to the American people because that is not yet a crime.) He forfeited a million dollar bond he had posted pending resolution of his case. "It is," Libby said, "a small price to pay for freedom."

Professor Eric Stanhope Jones, an expert on freedom, concurred. "Libby got a lot more for his million dollars than America got for the 200 billion dollars it's spent so far on Iraq."