Howard Kurtz: Frog-Marching Time for Rove?

[Mark E. Smith]

Washington Post 7/12/05

The liberal blogosphere is aflame with animosity toward Karl Rove, now that he has been sucked deeper into the Plame probe.

Some folks out there think he should just be thrown in the jail cell next to Judy Miller's, no indictment or trial necessary.

To some of the left, Rove is the epitome of all they despise about the administration. He is Bush's brain, pulling the strings from behind the scenes, injecting politics into every conceivable situation. Rove further infuriated his critics a couple of weeks ago when he seemed to use the 9/11 tragedy to score political points, saying republicans wanted to wage war and liberals wanted to offer the terrorists therapy.

Add the fact that this controversy is about the runup to the Iraq war and an apparent White House effort to discredit a prominent Bush critic, Joe Wilson, and you have an incendiary mixture. (It was Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, who once declared that it would be "fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.") And this dovetails nicely with the conviction that the press did a lousy job on WMD before the war and has been too soft on Karl & Co. ever since.

There are two issues here, it seems to me. Legally, what Rove said to Mr. Cooper on "double super secret backround" may or may not have violated the law against identifying intelligence agents. There are questions about whether Rove knew that Plame was undercover, whether he was "knowingly" outing her, and so forth.

But politically, this is a bombshell. Rove, who has insisted he did not leak Plame's name, has something to do with this effort, even if he didn't "name" her. (The defense: It all depends on the meaning of the word "leak?") He was attempting to undercut Wilson when he told Cooper that wifey had helped set up Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger (where Wilson didn't find the facts the administration wanted on Saddam seeking uranium) and that the uranium business could still be true (it wasn't). And didn't the White House promise to fire anyone involved in the leak?

What does Rove do now? Give a couple of interviews and explain his role? Or remain in the backround while his lawyers issue carefully parsed statements?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/12/BL2005071200330.html

Funny to see Kurtz, after some obligatory liberal bashing (just to show everyone what a fine independent thinking fellow he is, I suppose), jump in with both feet and start doing some Rove stomping himself.

[ewagner]

1. "...no indictment or trial necessary."

You mean sort of like the Patriot Act? :sarcasm:

[grytpype]

2. Wingers love due process when it's one of their own being accused.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Why is this jerk Kurtz calling it the "liberal" blogosphere?

Liberals aren't the only ones pissed off by the scandal.

The stupid media has got to stop framing everything in us vs. them; evil vs. good; conservative vs. liberal. How are we suppose to find common ground when everything is fed to us in polarized terms?