Cherokee Sage Woman

I love Arianna Huffington. She thinks the way I think, & expresses it so much better! I have kept a closeful eye on Turd Blossom (Bushit's own nickname for the shitheel pal of his.)
And his antics & excuses have grown so wearying. Huffington is right on the mark w/ her essays today!
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T H E H U F F I N G T O N P O S T




Has the Turd Blossom Express Reached the End of the Line?
Posted July 12, 2005 at 6:56 p.m. EDT

The Rove Scandal Train is picking up momentum (even here in Nice). Just ask Scottie McClellan, who is starting to look more and more like Ron Ziegler with every passing press briefing.

Actually, two separate Rove trains have left the station (and, no, this isn't going to be one of those old algebra problems they used to give us). The legal train and the political train -- heading along two very separate tracks. But it's now clear that the White House damage control team has decided to try and link the two. (Maybe this is one of those algebra problems: "If two trains leave the White House heading in opposite directions, one leading to a federal courthouse and the other to political Siberia, can even a Boy Genius keep both of them from going off track?")

The White House strategy is actually a very smart one. As Lawrence O'Donnell has explained in detail , the bar is set very high on proving Rove broke the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. As Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, put it, "We made it exceedingly difficult to violate." (Wonder if she passed this tidbit on to her good pal Bob Novak before he outed Plame?)

Indeed, according to the New York Times, only one person has been prosecuted under the relevant statute -- a CIA clerk in Ghana who ID'd two CIA agents to a boyfriend. (Some kind of strange pillow talk? "Yeah, tell me who's covert, baby!")

By linking the potential political fallout to the legal issue at hand, the White House can then hem, haw, and stall -- claiming that we need to let the legal system run its course -- and then hope that if special prosecutor Fitzgerald can't clear the high legal bar and indict Rove, it'll be able to claim that he's somehow been exonerated for his political sins as well.

Which, of course, is utter nonsense. Because while the legal jury may be out, the political jury is definitely in... Whether someone in a position of power and authority has acted inappropriately is not a matter of narrow legal definitions and fine semantic distinctions. Given what we already know about Rove's conversations, we can, right now, without even a single new revelation, and without reservation, say this: he is guilty of behavior that dishonored the White House and that placed the dirty politics of vindictive retribution over national security.

Ethics isn't just about what is legal or illegal. It's about what is right and what is wrong. And what Rove did was wrong -- no amount of legalistic hair-splitting will change that.

So the question is: will the press buy into the White House's attempt to put the two Rove trains on the same track? Perhaps... but after ignoring the story for weeks (hell, years!), it looks like the MSM are smelling blood in the water. ABC's Terry Moran, CBS's John Roberts, and NBC's David Gregory were all aggressive in their questioning of McClellan at today's press briefing, and even Tim Russert weighed in on the Today show (wearing what Crooks and Liars called "his super double secret serious face"), saying, "One Republican said to me last night, 'If this was a Democratic White House, we'd have Congressional hearings in a second.'" (Don't you just love it when Tim slips on his ultimate insider status and models it like a sexy negligee?)

Here's the bottom line: let's imagine for a moment that Fitzgerald does not indict Rove. Does this in any way mitigate, excuse, or erase what Rove did? Does it take the onus off President Bush's promise to fire the White House leaker? Of course not. Rove leaked -- and he should be fired. The Turd Blossom Express has reached the end of the line.



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Today's Pile of Steaming Turd Blossom
Posted July 13, 2005 at 10:06 p.m. EDT

Sportscasters love to say that a good offense is the best defense. But, as we're seeing, in politics, an offensive offense can be a lousy defense. I mean, if Karl Rove's future -- both political and legal -- depends on the offensive that the White House and its smear machine are frantically mounting, then ol' Karl is in even bigger trouble than we thought.

Their method seems to be a shock-and-awe operation where they bombard us with any and every defense they can, hoping that something sticks. So far, nothing has. And as Harry Shearer puts it, there is nothing like a White House press corps scorned.

Bush may be making the claim that he can't comment until "the investigation is complete," but he and Karl obviously have no problem with allowing the sleaze machine they control at the RNC to comment freely.

The attack on Rove's critics and the renewed assault on Joe Wilson are also comically accompanied by calls for civility.

Josh Marshall has this from Sen. Norm Coleman: "We have enough to do in the Senate in minding our own business than to be sticking our noses into someone else's business. Everyone needs to cool the rhetoric, focus on the business of the people, and allow the investigation to run its course."

The sentence before this notes that the Democrats are "out of ideas" and "lack vision." Coleman the peacemaker. Yes, everybody needs to "cool" it. Just as soon we finish destroying Joe Wilson.

You know when Republicans start issuing calls for people to "cool the rhetoric" and "focus on the business of the people," they're in full panic mode.

And they're right to be. Try as they might, they just can't come up with a plausible defense that takes the stink away from what everyone -- including all non-self-deluded Republicans -- knows Turd Blossom was really doing.

Here are the GOP fabrications that are bugging me the most:

First, the question of whether or not Rove actually "named" Plame, or identified her as covert agent. It doesn't matter. Read the law, and you'll find the key phrase is "... discloses any information identifying" a covert agent.

Second, the absurd claim that Rove was just trying to discourage a reporter from writing an incorrect story -- just "doing his job," as one surrogate put it.

If that's the case, then why was Rove's act of good samaritanism on "double super secret background?" Was Karl hiding his "whistle blowing," as the Wall Street Journal called it (apparently with a straight face), because he's incredibly modest? Was he afraid he'd be fired for "just doing his job?" Does he, perhaps, believe that he's the one that's undercover?

Then there is the claim that Wilson is a Kerry supporter. And what difference, pray, does this make? Reading the law, I don't see a "Kerry supporter exemption" anywhere.

This is one element of a wider line of reasoning that somehow what Karl did was okay because "Joe Wilson has been discredited."

Leaving aside the fact that he hasn't been, you don't get to pick which covert agents' identities you reveal based on the relative merits of their spouses. If the Republicans in Congress want that to be the case, they are free to amend the law, but right now this point is utterly irrelevant.

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