lets go to the video tape
- bill 7-11-2005 10:58 pm [add a comment]

a short history of vouching for karl
- bill 7-11-2005 11:06 pm [add a comment]

It's not the treason, it's the lying about the treason. Or does that only work with fellatio?
- mark 7-11-2005 11:13 pm [add a comment]

martha did what ?

With everything coming out today about Karl Rove, it's worth stepping to bring a few things into focus. It's been pretty clear since fall of 2003 that Karl Rove did this. It's been a near certainty since then that if it wasn't Rove than


it was someone in a very similar position. After all, Bob Novak said in his now-notorious column that "senior administration officials" had told him about her.

We don't know that the president knew about the decision to use Plame's work at CIA against Wilson in advance, though given the high-level working group assembled at the White House to go to war with Wilson, it's reasonable to suspect that he did. But at a minimum the president has known about this as long as the rest of us -- that is, almost exactly two years.

And he -- unlike anyone else in the country -- had the power to call Rove into his office and ask him whether he did this or knew who did?

Whether he knew before or after, he's known for a very long time. And pretty clearly he didn't want Rove held to any account. Indeed, he's gone to great lengths to prevent this from happening. And of course few reporters in DC have cared to press this essential point.

--Josh Marshall

But let's put aside the legal issues for a moment. This email demonstrates that Rove committed a firing offense. He leaked national security information as part of a fierce campaign to undermine Wilson, who had criticized the White House on the war on Iraq. Rove's overworked attorney, Robert Luskin, defends his client by arguing that Rove never revealed the name of Valerie Plame/Wilson to Cooper and that he only referred to her as Wilson's wife. This is not much of a defense. If Cooper or any other journalist had written that "Wilson's wife works for the CIA"--without mentioning her name--such a disclosure could have been expected to have the same effect as if her name had been used: Valerie Wilson would have been compromised, her anti-WMD work placed at risk, and national security potentially harmed. Either Rove knew that he was revealing an undercover officer to a reporter or he was identifying a CIA officer without bothering to check on her status and without considering the consequences of outing her. Take your pick: in both scenarios Rove is acting in a reckless and cavalier fashion, ignoring the national security interests of the nation to score a political point against a policy foe.

This ought to get Rove fired--unless he resigns first.

I think we can expect a diversionary tactic, soon. Like the day Colleen Rowley testified about government incompetence and Bush annouced the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
- tom moody 7-12-2005 1:23 am [add a comment]

7/12/05

President Bush, at an Oval Office photo opportunity Tuesday, was asked directly whether he would fire Rove -- in keeping with a pledge in June, 2004, to dismiss any leakers in the case. The president did not respond.

For the second day, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to answer questions about Rove.

I took genuine delight in watching little Scotty squirm in the video at C&L (linked above). I don't know if this will lead to anything, but I savored the moment. (By the way, is Scotty hitting the Krispy Kremes a little too hard these days?)

On my page I posted a letter to my local paper. They're not printing me so much anymore, but I assume that by adding to the weight of opinion, I may help a like-minded person get published. I didn't use the T word (treason), because I was trying really hard to be moderate, but I did say "national security crime".
- mark 7-12-2005 8:10 pm [add a comment]

Looks like the plan is to sit like statues until Fitzgerald concludes the investigation, and wait for the press to, as Billmon put it, be distracted by a new shiny object.
- tom moody 7-12-2005 8:17 pm [add a comment]

i dont know if this shit will stick to the barn either. but its at least a fissure in the bush amin fascade. and i hope it will contribute to a reality check on the "whats the matter with kansas" effect. i keep hoping that if we give em enough rope hell hang himself. as corporately efficient as they are i still get a gut feeling their reckless meanass greedy streak that will catch up with them.
- bill 7-12-2005 8:21 pm [add a comment]

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 election campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Bush's proposals.
But the real demonstration that Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.
Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Rove.

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The information in the State Department memorandum generally tracked the information Mr. Novak laid out for Mr. Rove in their conversation, according to the account of their exchange provided by the person briefed on what Mr. Rove has told investigators.

But it appears to differ in at least one way, raising questions about whether it was the original source of the material that ultimately made its way to Mr. Novak. In his July 14, 2003, column, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson as Valerie Plame. The State Department memorandum referred to her as Valerie Wilson, according to the government official who reread it on Friday.

the story does continue to break.


- bill 7-23-2005 5:42 am [add a comment]

Is Miller a reporter or the story?
- mark 7-29-2005 5:12 am [add a comment]

i saw this going on on the kos. plausible.
- bill 7-29-2005 9:01 am [add a comment]