Plamegate Perjury? From Matt Cooper, Maybe...

Wanna know how much steam has bled out of the grand inquisition to draw and quarter Karl Rove? Now the Extreme Media is trying to push the notion that Rove perjured himself by contradicting Time reporter Matt Cooper's grand jury testimony that the latter never brought up welfare reform in their 7/11/03 phone conversation.

This, per Byron York's expert sources (some even identified!), does not perjury maketh:

But speculation that Rove's conversation with Cooper might somehow form the basis of a perjury charge has no basis, according to knowledgeable sources. There are two reasons. The first is that there is solid evidence to support Rove's version of events. The second is that, even if Rove's account were incorrect, a conflict in testimony about welfare reform is not material to the Plamegate case.

Even if it was material, says Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor who also, as a Capitol Hill aide, helped draft the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it still wouldn't matter:

[T]he difference between Rove's and Cooper's account of their conversation falls within the normal differences in recollection that often occur when two people are asked about the same event. And if such differences were the basis for a perjury prosecution, Toensing says, one might as well speculate that Matt Cooper could face such charges. Both scenarios, she suggests, are ridiculous. "Somebody remembers something as happening on Tuesday, and somebody remembers it happening on Wednesday. People differ in their memory. It's not perjury."

If this big piece 'o nothing had centered around sex, d'ya think the EM would be floating a perjury angle?