The Next Truther Demand For The "Truth"

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Karl Rove has given us a peek at the next truther meme.

From Rupert Murdoch's NYPost:

Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton might have brain damage.

Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive.

He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.

And then the lying starts.

The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”

The pagesix writer notes one of Rove's mistakes:

Despite Rove’s claims, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from New York Presbyterian Hospital after spending three days undergoing treatment for a potentially life-threatening blood clot.

3 days, 30 days, what's the difference when you're lying to the American public?

But what were the glasses for?

Let's turn to ABC for that one:

The thick glasses Hillary Clinton has been wearing in public since returning from a concussion and blood clot last month are the result of lingering effects of her health problems, a Clinton aide confirms.

"She'll be wearing these glasses instead of her contacts for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion," said spokesman Philippe Reines. "With them on she sees just fine."

But here's the kicker.

Didn't Rove's friends on the right say that she was faking it all along?  Why yes they did - including, oddly enough, Murdoch's NYPost:

Clinton’s story beggars belief: While traveling in Europe, she contracted a stomach virus . . . which made her dehydrated . . . which made her faint at home . . . which caused her to fall and hit her head . . . which gave her a nasty concussion.

But back to page six. A Clinton spokesperson is quoted as saying:

Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying.

But it's probably the new normal.

Karl Rove in Pittsburgh Today

Karl "The Architect" Rove on The Colbert Report

George W. Bush's favorite turd blossom, Karl Rove, will be in Pittsburgh today at the DUG East Convention. The theme of the convention is "Unleashing the Utica, Monetizing the Marcellus." Rove is being advertised as the "Special Luncheon Speaker." The description of his speech is as follows:

A Post-Election Luncheon with Karl Rove

In an encore appearance at DUG East, the former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to President George W. Bush shares his view of the ballot results and their implications for better U.S. government policy.

Hmm..."shares his view of the ballot results and their implications for better U.S. government policy." Think that was written before the election? And before his utter embarrassment on FOX News on election night? Well, it was. You'd think someone would want to update that a bit.

Or maybe Karl will continue to thumb his nose at reality...

Also, for you fracktivists out there, there is a planned protest tomorrow at this convention. Via Facebook:

Protest Michael Krancer at Frackers' Convention

Public Event · By Marcellus Protest
Thursday 11:00am

Info: info@marcellusprotest.org 

In honor of its two year anniversary, Marcellus Protest is organizing a spur of the moment, DIY protest at the 'Developing Un-natural Gas' [DUG} convention. This year's convention features PA DEP's Michael Krancer, who speaks at 11:15 on Nov. 15.

Well, we've got a few things to tell the frackers too. Bring your own signs. ...

STUDENTS: "Say NO To Campus Drilling! Join us on November 15 at 11:00am outside the David Lawrence Convention Center to protest the natural gas industry's plan to frack and install related infrastructure on private and state university lands in Pennsylvania. We will be joined by Marcellus Protest Coalition, the grassroots organizers who successfully banned drilling through Pittsburgh City Council.

Afterward, we will visit newly re-elected Senator Bob Casey Jr's field office and deliver our message to his staff.

You may recall that PA's DEP is under fire over their water test reports:

Testimony by a high-ranking state Department of Environmental Protection official reveals the agency may have intentionally left out part of the results of water testing in relation to Marcellus shale drilling.

According to a press release from the office of state Rep. Jesse White, D-47, Cecil Township, the sworn testimony of DEP Bureau of Laboratories Technical Director Taru Upadhyay revealed the DEP used a computer code system that intentionally left out a portion of test results for residents who were concerned their water had been contaminated by nearby drilling.

“This is beyond outrageous,” White said. “Anyone who relied on the DEP for the truth about whether their water has been impacted by drilling activities has apparently been intentionally deprived of critical health and safety information by their own government.”

The freak out on FOX

Via TPM:

We’re going to have a piece on this shortly. But in case you weren’t watching Fox News over the last 45 minutes or so, something for the ages just happened. Shortly after Fox and everyone else called Ohio and the election for President Obama, Rove staged a live TV mutiny. He insisted that the Ohio call had been premature and then forced Fox’s Megan Kelly to make an SNL like walk through the Fox building and confront the network’s official number counters with Rove’s objections.

They have the video too.

Too damn funny!

Turd Blossom and The Doctor Who Screamed

Wednesday night, I was lucky enough to attend the last lecture of the 9th season of the Pittsburgh Speakers Series. It took place at Heinz Hall, dahn-tahn.

From the series' website:

WHAT IS THE PITTSBURGH SPEAKERS SERIES?

The Pittsburgh Speakers Series is a series of seven different lectures, on seven evenings, at Heinz Hall from October through April.

Our distinguished speakers share with the audience their unique experiences and perspectives on a wide variety of topics - from world affairs & politics, to history & the environment, to books & authors, to business & economics, to the Arts & entertainment. For those who wish to ask the speaker questions, an exciting question and answer session follows each lecture.

While the tickets for the series are only sold as a series, I was able to snag a single ticket for the event - a dual lecture with former Bush Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove and former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman, Howard Dean:

Two powerhouses of the American political system faceoff in an evening featuring individual commentary followed by a response to each other’s talk and audience Q&A. Rove is former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President G.W. Bush. Former Governor of Vermont and DNC Chairman, Dean ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

The seating at these events (or at least the one I attended) is rather odd. The first 5 rows or so in front and the last 10 or so are designated "free seating" while the vast middle is reserved. I don't know if it's a similar situation in the balcony. Arriving early, I got a seat in the "free seating" section in front (second row, extreme left as you look out from the audience) very close to the stage, very close to the door Rove and Dean would be walking out of.

WQED's Jim Cunningham was the evening's moderator.

The plan of the evening was this; each guy would get 15-20 minutes for an "introspective" lecture to the audience and then the rest of the time would be taken up with questions and answers and rebuttals to those answers.

Rove, by virtue of a coin toss, went first.

Politics aside, Karl Rove is a very funny guy and a very good public speaker. He gave a concise and very polished "aw shucks, ma'am" autobiography that went from his childhood to his time in the Bush Administration, though the details of his time in the White House were, uh, rather sketchy. A couple of very moving scenes from 9/11 and that was about it.

Governor Dean's 20 minutes were less polished, though not less successful. More rumpled than his cuff-linked counterpart, he managed to get some applause where Rove didn't. It was at that point I thought, "The crowd's Dean's."

That assessment, however, turned out to be incomplete. During the question and answer time, Rove did get some applause to some of his answers. A respectable amount, to be sure as his answers pleased sizable chunks of the audience. His applause also happened to be less than the applause Dean got.

But back to the introspection. What we learned about Karl Rove:

• He grew up out west. Not poor, but on the "shabby side of middle class."
• He was always a nerdy kid - his first paper in class was on dialectical materialism.
• His first "campaign" work (at about 10) was riding up and down his street with a Nixon bumper sticker on his bike. That got him beaten up by the 12 yr old girl who was a Kennedy Supporter.
• His rise in the GOP from College Republican to Texas to the White House was fast.
• He was against the idea of Dick Cheney as Vice President.
• Dick Cheney shot Rove's lawyer and there were laughs all around.

Dean's lecture was somewhat less polished. Some (though not all) of his jokes fell flat. Flat like a flat thing flatly falling. The point of his speech seemed to be that what America needs is for politicians to do what's right for the country and not what's merely right for their own careers. He gave a few examples:

• Signing the first Civil Unions in the United States bill into law. He said it was the right thing to do even though he had to wear a bullet proof vest for the rest of his time as governor.
• He told about a few legislators in Vermont who lost their seats after voting for that legislation - even when they knew that their vote wasn't necessary for it to pass. They voted for it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Then we moved on to the question and answer period. This is where I had some issues. The questions were not done "live" from the floor but were chosen ahead of time.

There were a little more than a half dozen questions Cunningham asked Rove and Dean. He told me after the lecture that the members of the previous lecture's audience were asked to submit questions via email. When asked he said there were "hundreds" and that the producers of the series chose which questions he was to ask. He did stress that neither Rove nor Dean knew the questions beforehand. In other words, they heard them when we heard them. Out of hundreds of questions only a handful made it onto the stage.

And of those, there were no questions regarding:

• The Bush v Gore Supreme Court case
• The run up to war with Iraq
• The never found WMD
• The illegal domestic surveillance
• The outing of Valerie Plame
• The Bush-approved torture

Out of the hundreds of questions emailed-in, Rove and Dean were asked about:

• Navigating the lies and distortions of the current media environment (this included a brief discussion by Rove of the Long Form Birth Certificate released by the White House. By the way Rove said that Obama withheld it in an effort to let the Republicans further discredit themselves.
• 2012 Campaign strategy
• Job creation
• Corporate Tax breaks
• The Citizens United Supreme Court case
• Family Values v Political Competence - which is more important in a candidate?

Don't get me wrong these are all very important topics. But weighed against the enormity of some of the decisions made by the Bush Administration and given that Karl Rove was there in the middle of things for nearly 7 years, you'd think that there'd be at least one question about state-approved torture or yellowcake uranium or smoking guns as mushroom clouds.

But there wasn't.

Yea, I kinda have a problem with that.

We were told at the beginning of the evening that the lecture would be an example of two people of opposing views having a civil discussion. But if civility means ignoring, for example, the events leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, then perhaps a little less civility is in order, if only for a chance to face the truth.

Beginnings Of Another Zombie Lie

First I'll try to kill it. But I already know that such actions are futile.

For instance, they're still saying President Obama wasn't born in the United States. They're also saying he's the illegitimate son of Malcolm X (which, considering the fact that Malcolm X was an American Citizen, completely undercuts the "Obama is not an American" lie)

Anyway back to the zombie lie at hand.

From Greg Sargent at The Plum Line:

I suppose this is par for the course. But perhaps it should be part of the discussion that right wing commentators who claim lefty groups and unions are running ads funded by anonymous donors -- just as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other righty groups are doing -- are just flat out lying.

This lie is so easily debunked that Joe Scarborough actually retracted it today on Morning Joe after making the claim and getting corrected. Will Karl Rove and Fox News and others spreading this falsehood or letting it go unchecked do the same?

Scarborough, during a discussion this morning of the Obama-and-Dem-versus-Chamber dust-up, called on President Obama to demand disclosure from unions and MoveOn, claiming "blatant hypocrisy."

Sargent continues:

But the comparison is totally bogus. Under Federal law, unions disclose far more about their funding than other political groups do, and it just so happens that MoveOn's ads are funded by a Federal political committee that has to comply with the same disclosure requirements that candidate and party committees do.

And now the zombie:

On Fox News yesterday, Rove, who helped found two groups that are dumping millions in anonymous contributions into the midterms, compared his efforts to those of liberal groups like the National Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the Center for American Progress -- and, of course, the supreme boogeyman, MoveOn.

"Like a lot of liberal groups," Rove said, they "do not report their donors."

Karl Rove - Zombie liar.

More On Christine O'Donnell

A clearer picture of Christine O'Donnell, that darling of the Tea Party, has been emerging since she defeated Mike Castle for the GOP nomination for Senate from the great state of Delaware.

She's a creationist.

New York Magazine had a piece out yesterday on her enlightened cosmological views. Have a taste:

This was during one of our country's periodic debates over teaching creationism in schools. In a discussion moderated by anchor Miles O'Brien, O'Donnell squared off against Michael McKinney, a University of Tennessee professor of evolutionary biology. Not only was O'Donnell in favor of teaching creationism alongside evolution, but she wasn't even sure evolution was real.

First there's this:

Well, as the senator from Tennessee mentioned, evolution is a theory and it's exactly that. There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put — that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.

Then there's this:

Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that.

She's against masturbation.

From Talkingpointsmemo:

O'Donnell, it seems, is opposed to masturbation, and considers looking at pornography akin to adultery. And back in the 90s, though [on the video] the hair was different and Joan Osborne's 90's mainstay "One Of Us" played in the background, O'Donnell maintained a similar stance: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can't masturbate without lust!"

She's got a problem with homosexuality.

From the dailybeast:

Toward the end of the Clinton administration, she protested the appointment of James Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg, a posting the religious right opposed because Hormel was gay. “The SALT was concerned about Hormel’s ties to the pedophile-rights movement,” her website said, though there was not a shred of evidence behind the slur. In 1997, in a clip recently unearthed by Talking Points Memo, she appeared on C-SPAN, where, looking fresh, lovely, and innocent, she objected to AIDS sufferers being called “victims” because the disease is the product of their own actions. In an appearance on Fox in 2000, she exclaimed over the horrors of New York’s gay pride parade: “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion!”

On 'tother hand, one ex-aide of hers calls her a "complete fraud" and Bush's brain is on record saying she's said some "nutty things" and that she's unelectable.

Teh crazie. Tea-Party Palin style.

They Have No Shame (Seconda pars)

More evidence the GOP has no shame.

First there's Karl Rove. And no, I am not talking about how this "traditional marriage defender" is getting divorced - for a second time. No surprise to learn that a prominent GOPer is trying to rewrite Bush Administration history. Via Thinkprogress:

Yesterday on Hannity, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove sharply criticized President Obama’s response to the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day. In particular, Rove went after the fact that Obama issued his first public statement on the matter 72 hours after the event.

And what do you think we find when we actually you know take a look at the Bush record? Thinkprogress links to this at the this Huffingtonpost article where the headline reads:

Bush Waited Six Days To Discuss Shoe Bomber With No GOP Complaints

Huh. Imagine that.

There's more. This from Talkingpointsmemo:

Last night, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said that he disagreed with the decision to try the Flight 253 suspect criminally, and that "he's not a citizen of this country."

A few paragraphs later TPM reports:

Of course, Ridge was secretary of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, when British citizen and "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid was tried and convicted in 2003 on terrorism charges after attempting to blow up a plane with explosives hidden in his shoes.

History, truth, evidence. None of these terms means anything to these folks. Not while they're defending the records of war criminals.

A footnote: So Rove has now been married (and divorced) twice and Newt Gingrich is on his third marriage (he's twice divorced). Rush Limbaugh married and divorced three times. Even Ronald Reagan got divorced and remarried. Given that the GOP is the party most bent on "defending" marriage can someone please explain to me, in light of how casually prominent Republicans seem to take their marriage vows, why so many gay Americans still can't get married?

KARL ROVE on Fred Honsberger's Show - MONDAY

My friend Fred Honsberger just announced on his Facebook page that KARL ROVE will be on his radio show this Monday March 16th. His show is from noon to three. I have no idea when Rove will be on during those three hours.

Wherever you are on the planet, if you have web access you can listen to the show at:

kdkaradio.com

Just follow the listen live icon.

I think everyone should listen to Fred's show and call in some questions for Karl "Contempt of Congress" Rove.

I have a few. For instance, I'd love for Rove to answer questions about:

• being held in Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify after being subpoenaed.
• his part in outing Valerie Plame.
• his part in the political firing of all those US Attorneys.
• his part in the prosecution of Governor Siegelman.
• how the GOP crashed and burned in 2008 despite the fact that he said in 2006 that it would reemerge as the majority in 2008.
• how he was using non-White House e-mail servers to circumvent the Presidential Records Act.

For starters...

Attempted Citizen's Arrest Of Karl Rove

From Newser:

(Newser) – A protester attempted to slap the cuffs on Karl Rove in San Francisco yesterday, in what she called a citizen's arrest for treason, the LA Times reports. Rove was having a debate with former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell at a mortgage bankers' convention when a well-dressed woman walked onstage and asked why no women were present. Then she pulled out the handcuffs and moved in on Rove, at which point a security guard intervened and she was pulled away.

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Rove on Palin

From our friends up north:

Canada's esteemed think-tank, the Fraser Institute, hosted a gala dinner last night featuring as keynote speaker Republican Karl Rove. He is considered the "brains" behind the Bush election victories. He was also Bush's key advisor. Last night, he did party spin but said something significant.A Toronto businessman asked him if he thought Sarah Palin would make a good President."I don't know," said Rove.

If Rove doesn't know, we should all be worried. Rove is not running the McCain show, but is inside enough to know so how can he not know? How about others in the party, do they not know too? Shouldn't they know before they work for her? Does John McCain know?

As Andrew Sullivan wrote, I know.

Conyers: Readying Capitol Jail Cell for Karl Rove

Those attending today's press conference on Single Payer Healthcare with Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, held at the Democratic Party Platform Committee meeting at the David Lawrence Pittsburgh Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA were rewarded with some tough talk on an entirely different subject:

What to do about Karl Rove's inherent contempt of Congress.

Talking Points Memo reported yesterday that, "Things are moving right along in the wake of the HJC v. Miers decision last week" and that "White House Counsel Fred Fielding has already responded to Rep. John Conyer's (D-MI) letter requesting 'quick compliance' with the ruling." (More at Crooks & Liars here.)

But it would seem that things aren't moving quickly enough for Conyers (I guess Rove just can't be talked down from the ledge of contempt proceedings).

A source who attended the press conference reported the following:

In a sometimes rambling press conference, Conyers noted that they were quite busy and that the jail cell in the Capitol was being brought up to federal minimum standards as it hadn't been used since the 1930s. (See Linda Shuster's comments on that cell here.) He added that while a cot would be brought in that a TV wouldn't. And, that we'd see how long Rove would like to be a guest there before he finally decides to comply with the HJC subpoena.

Apparently KDKA was there. I hope they have some video or even some audio up soon.

Finally, can it be much longer before we see something like this?


.

Funny, I've had contempt for him for years . . .

.
Karl Rove Held In Contempt By House Judiciary Committee
.

In Contempt

Send Karl Rove to Jail

The video:



The petition:

http://sendkarlrovetojail.com/
.

Closing in on Rove

From CBS News The Politico:

(The Politico) Just off the House floor today, the Crypt overheard House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers tell two other people: "We're closing in on Rove. Someone's got to kick his ass."

Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn't, said Conyers, "We'll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We'd hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested."

Conyers said the committee wants Rove to testify about his role in the imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, among other things.

"We want him for so many things, it's hard to keep track," Conyers said.

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Darth Vader Turd Blossom Is Coming to Pitt!

Someone spotted an ad in the Pitt News and passed it along to me:

You can see the online edition here.

An Evening with Karl Rove

March 3
8:30 PM
Assembly Room (WPU)
Price: Free for Pitt Students

Karl Rove, the former Deputy Cheif of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush will be on Pitt's Campus on Monday March 3rd at 8:30 pm in the WPU Assembly Room.

"No presidential appointee has ever had such a strong infludence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon." - Michael Barone, US News & World Reports.

-Tickets are available in the Pitt Program Council Ticket Office WPU with avalid Pitt ID.

-Your ticket and valid Pitt Student ID guarantees admission until 8:15 p.m. Doors will open at 7:45 p.m. No reserving of seats is permitted.

-This event is for Pitt Students only.

Call 648-7900 with any questions. Or email ppc@pitt.edu

I would think that all of Pittsburgh would like to protest welcome Mr. Rove.







UPDATE: Yes, for some reason while I was informed that Rove would be coming to town and found a link to the Pitt event page for Rove coming to town, I still somehow had it in my head that it was Cheney who was coming to town. It must be all that dope that we libruls smoke.
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Bush & Cheney lied to public; implicated in Plame scandal

From former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new book:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff, and the president himself."

The CNN story on this helpfully reminds us that, "Rove, who left the White House staff at the end of August, was not charged in the case. But his lawyer has acknowledged he was one of two sources cited by syndicated columnist Bob Novak, who first reported in the summer of 2003 that Plame worked for the CIA."

Now here's where the Wingnuts will cry that Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage admitted to revealing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame COMPLETELY IGNORING THE FACT THAT THERE WERE MULTIPLE LEAKERS TO MULTIPLE REPORTERS/COLUMNISTS.

Is there anything about this was that Bush and Cheney haven't lied about?

IMPEACH
.

First Rummy, then Turd Blossom, now Abu Gonzales

The rats are either fleeing the sinking ship or resigning in disgrace . . .

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! If I hear one more talking head on TV spew how Alberto Gonzales embodies/lived "The American Dream" I'll start spewing chunks.

The American Dream does not include torture.

The American Dream does not include warrantless wiretaps on its citizens.

The American Dream does not include firing good US Attorneys because they won't play politics with justice.

The American Dream does not include lying to Congress.

The American Dream does not include advising the President of these United States that he can break any law and ignore the US Constitution.

Back on Friday, January 28, 2005, we published a post entitled "Unacceptable" at 2 Political Junkies that opened with:

It is simply unacceptable for the United States of America to have the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Dynasty as the Attorney General of this country.

A country founded on the rights of the individual cannot sanctify a person to be the Attorney General of these United States who sanctified torture as long as it wasn't "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The US Attorney General's job is to function as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. In that capacity the US Attorney General provides assistance and guidance to the heads of executive departments of the Government.

We already know that Alberto R. Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions (which Gonzales views as "quaint") inoperative.

We know that Alberto R. Gonzales believes that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States.

These views are unacceptable in a US Attorney General.

For these reasons, the 2 Political Junkies blog opposes the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Anyone with half a brain should have known back then exactly what kind of justice to expect from Abu Gonzales:


They should have known that he was the kind of guy, for example, who would go over the head of the acting Attorney General to harass a sick old man (Ashcroft) in the ICU to try to get him to allow Abu to keep spying on the citizens of this country -- and lie to the Congress about the whole sick, sordid episode later.

For some recent examples of Abu's problems as covered by 2pj, you can click here. Even many Republicans could no longer stomach the guy.

But, let's not forget that when you hear the MSM call Abu the last of Bush's "Texas Mafia" in the White House how accurate that description is.

The Mafia needs sleazy attorneys to keep them in business and Gonzales was exactly that from the start. After all, he's the guy who in 1996 got Bush out of jury duty so that his DUI wouldn't come out before an election.


Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush forgot that the United States Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. He's not supposed to be one of it's chief criminals.

But, it shouldn't end with his resignation. While Gonzales is now on his way out, he still must be held accountable for his illegal actions as must the rest of this gangland crew.

Three down,* two to go!**

* Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales
** Cheney, Bush

Karl Rove Update

I can remember hearing New KDKA radio guy, Kevin Miller, say on the air Karl Rove had nothing to do with the Plame case.

This clip should (SHOULD - but remember, we're talking rightwing talk radio where fact ne'er intrude) put that story to rest.

Here's the clip.

The important part happens at the end, with Matt Cooper. Here's a transcript of that portion (h/t to Crooks and Liars):

David Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something’s that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.

Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all the leak…

Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…

Cooper: …by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.

Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.

Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does..

For those keeping score at home, Robert Novak's column where we all read this:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Was published on July 14th, three days after the phone call Cooper described. Three days after Rove leaked the information to Cooper.

For Kevin Miller (or for that fact for anyone) to say that Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak is just plain wrong.

How wrong? This wrong:

Good Morning, Pittsburgh.

Two Views on Rove's Legacy

The first from a Conservative - David Frum (the first from...Frum?) a former speechwriter of dubya's. He paints Karl Rove as a coalition builder who specialized in "polarization" politics:

He united his own base on one side — and united his opponents on the other. Al Gore and John Kerry each won 48 percent, the best back-to-back performance by a losing party since the 19th century. Play-to-the-base politics can be a smart strategy — so long as your base is larger than your opponents’.

And describes the insular outlook of dubya's White House:

In my brief service as a speechwriter inside the Bush administration, I often wondered why it was that skeptical experts on issues like immigration could never get even a hearing for their point of view. We took the self-evident brilliance of our plans so much for granted that we would not even meet, for example, with conservative academics who had the facts and figures to demonstrate the illusion of Rovian hopes for a breakthrough among Hispanic voters. We were so mesmerized by the specious analogies between 1996 and 1896 that we forgot that analogies are literary devices, not evidence.

I like that last line. Wish I'd written it.

The problem, though, is that Rove's MO has little time to work any more. Frum calls him a "miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam." Here's why:

But it has been apparent for many years that the Democratic base is growing faster than the Republican base. The numbers of the unmarried and the non-churchgoing are growing faster than the numbers of married and church-going Americans. The nonwhite and immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than that of white native-borns. The Democrats are the party of the top and bottom of American society; the Republicans do best in the great American middle, which is losing ground.

I can't agree that the Democrats are the "party of the top and bottom of American society" but everything else in there seems right.

It's a good jumping off point to the next view. This time from the Ragin' Cajun hisself, James Carville. After pointing out some recent wins of Rove's (avoiding the 2000 "election" of dubya), Carville writes:

If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.

And offers up his evidence why:

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.

I do have to say that while Carville does write that Democracy Corps is a "non-profit polling company," he fails to say that it's his "non-profit polling company." He's one of its founders. Carville adds quite quickly:

It is not just Democracy Corps that has found this. A host of new polls and surveys over the course of the past few months has served as a harbinger of a rocky 2008 election for Republicans.

The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.

So long Karl, we hardly knew ye.

Turd Blossom to Resign

That's right. Karl Rove's resigning at the end of August.

It's in the Wall Street Journal.

And Paul Gigot has more.

Bye-bye, Karl.