What a difference a day makes. This morning, writing up a digest of all the news stories on Karl Rove would be about as easy as lassoing a gray whale* (when the analogy fits…).
Let’s begin with NBC First Read‘s cogent ties to the key issues on the floor of the Senate we can’t overlook:
But Democrats are going for a double play on both homeland and national security, two issues on which they’re typically at a disadvantage. … Karl Rove’s role in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name just might give them an opening to hit Republicans on national security in a way that will resonate beyond the Beltway. Or, it might remain a classic inside-the-Beltway story. … [T]he table of contents for the transcript of yesterday’s White House press briefing read, “Case of leak of name of CIA agent: 2-14.” Meaning that 12 straight pages … [out] of 17 were devoted to reporters’ inquiries, and Scott McClellan’s awkward stonewalling, about Rove’s role in the leak and what Bush will do about it. After the briefing, Democrats began piling on.
*The word in Inuit for gray whale meat is the same as their word for shit.
Below: Bush on TV this morning, and more round-ups. (FYI: I don’t see a WH press briefing scheduled today):
Jesus. Bush is on TV live with the Singapore PM. He looks like he’s aged 10 years. The bags under his eyes. … waiting for THE question … damn … they asked him about the SCOTUS appointment. He dodged the Q for now.
Presidential candidate John Kerry has a petition up demanding that Bush fire Rove.
at the TV last night watching Aaron on CNN talking about making our railways and mass transit safer. While I’m brushing my teeth, everytime Aaron’s guest comes on my husband demands that I tell him who that idiot is but I have no idea. The guy just keeps repeating that it would cost too much money to make our mass transit safer. It would cost so much to do that people couldn’t afford to use it. When I’m finished brushing I tell him that I have no idea, sometimes it seems like they just try to find someone to inflame viewers. At the end of the discussion they thank the guest from the Heritage Foundation.
Why was your husband upset about his comments?
I listened to a bit of it… I thought Aaron did a bit to get the Heritage guy off of his sole focus on how much it would cost.
You can probably find the transcript at Cnn.com. It’d be very interesting if you and your husband read it, and wrote it up in a diary.
but I think that my husband was so upset because the gentleman from the Heritage foundation wouldn’t listen much to Aaron’s questions or approach the topic from any other direction other than we couldn’t do it.
I heard this morning on Air America that Homeland Security has only spent 7% of the money ALREADY ALLOCATED to improving rail and transport safety. SEVEN measly percent! Now why was the idoit from the HEritage Foundation saying we couldn’t do it??
Now why was the idoit from the HEritage Foundation saying we couldn’t do it??
The Heritage Foundation is rabidly conservative and methinks the guy was providing some political cover for the administration in the form of talking points and sound bytes. It doesn’t have to be logical or even true, this is the way they operate.
I used to get their weekly email, just to see what nonsense they were spewing, but I had to discontinue it last year because I couldn’t stand to read it anymore.
So, I think your take is probably correct.
I am super impressed that you were able to read to read their weekly emails for as long as you did! I admire that kind of objectivity these days because mine is in such short supply!
(video game) to me.
So I was putting my son in the stroller to go for a walk this morning and saw something interesting in the ABC News ticker: Rove changes story and admits to being source of leak…
Funny thing is, I can’t find anything that direct ANYWHERE this morning. I do have an incredibly busy 1-year-old so not much time to search. If anyone else has seen this and has more on it, please post.
Back to chasing crazy little kid…
I’ll babysit if you want to look! (I’ll look too … nothing like that on CNN.)
You’ll babysit? Really?!!? : ) Just tell me what I should stock the fridge with and…
All I can find is this from BuzzFlash (but from last week):
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/07/ale05093.html
If you scroll down, there’s a “Rove Changes Story” headline. Maybe ABC is picking up on last week’s news? No surprise there. I just wonder why it would be on the ticker today – and then no discussion about it anywhere else. Ah, the lame MSM.
This is the best we can expect from the right wing LA Times. Makes me so mad I could scream!
From today’s front page:
Democrats Take Aim at Rove in Leak Case
Some lawmakers call for action to be taken against Bush’s aide. The White House says little.
By Richard Simon and Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writers
Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, his party’s presidential candidate last year, sent an e-mail to supporters calling on them to sign a “Fire Rove” online petition. “It’s perfectly clear that Rove — the person at the center of the slash-and-burn, smear-and-divide tactics that have come to characterize the Bush administration — has to go,” he wrote.
And Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter of New York called for Rove to be not only fired, but prosecuted as well. “There can be no gray area here, regardless of how he phrased it, regardless of how much detail he provided,” she said.
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey called for Bush to suspend Rove’s security clearance, noting Rove’s criticism last month of liberals for what the Bush aide described as a tepid response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Karl Rove has accused liberals of not understanding the consequences of 9/11, but he’s the one who blew the cover of a covert CIA agent,” Lautenberg said.
As soon as I get to work I am writing a letter to the editor to express my disgust at this twisted news coverage. Why do I subscribe to this newspaper????
To contact a staff member by e-mail, please compose an e-mail to them using this address format: Firstname.Lastname@latimes.com.
Go rip ’em a new one, Mythmother!!! Although this story has finally broke in a big way into that semi-fantasy world known as the major media, some reporters and outlets will still grudgingly do the story from their fawning pro-administration stance. We need to keep on their asses, and I think I’ll write my own letter as well.
Michael Kinsley and the publisher have produced one piece of shit, there’s just no ther way to put it.
Dear Mr. Simon and Mr. Schmitt:
I was dismayed to find your op-ed on today’s front page masquerading as news: Democrats Take Aim at Rove in Leak Case.
The news is not about elected officials from the Democratic party who are speaking out against the fact that Karl Rove has lied on record, Scott McClellan has lied, and George Bush has lied about Karl Rove’s unauthorized and possibly illegal disclosure of a CIA agent’s identity in order to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, because he refused to help the Bush administration FIX THE FACTS AROUND THE POLICY of waging an illegal and immoral war in Iraq.
The news is about Karl Rove’s unauthorized and possibly illegal disclosure of a CIA agent’s identity in order to discredit her husband.
Just thought you might want to know!
I think I can speak for a majority of Americans who are heartily sick of the word “partisan” and the way it is invoked by partisan journalists like yourselves to try to obscure the real issues.
Regards,
Okay, so it’s just a headline to Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes column, but it’s definitely nice to see the phrase make an appearance once again in a major news outlet.
Unfortunately, Kurtz typically misses the boat by noting in his lede:
While he’s started off the column by making it seem as though the outrage exists only in the blogosphere, Kurtz then manages to point out that more traditional media sources are also heavily promoting the Rove story. His examples cite The New York Times, “At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove’s Role in C.I.A. Leak”; USA Today, “At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove’s Role in C.I.A. Leak”; Chicago Tribune, “Democrats demand that Rove `clear air’: Bush confidant’s link to reporter in CIA leak raises questions”; and the Post’s own Dana Milbank, ” Spokesman Holds Tongue During Intense Grilling”.
And those, of course, are really just the tip of the iceberg, without dipping into blogland at all.
asked readers to give the Democrats one-liners to throw
at the White House and Republicans or just to sum up
the ROVE scandal.
This is one of the best:
___________________
Re: The Short and Sweet of It (5.00 / 2) (#35)
by Empty Sea on Jul 11, 2005 — 09:38:20 PM EST
“In all the partisan rancor, no one is thinking of
sacrifice Karl Rove has made.
Think about it:
he betrayed his country in order to serve me.”
– G. W. Bush
We should have a selection of one-liners over here at BooManTrib, too.
Check out this opening to the new AP article:
Please !DEITY, let it continue… (I used your code Omir, hehehe)
your POSTS are great … glad to find out about all these other news sources.
Juan Cole is cool too today:
Rove Unfit for Public Office
I can’t decide what to quote. Here’s a snippet:
Ambassador Joe Wilson, who once dared Saddam to hang him while wearing a rope around his neck while acting ambassador in Baghdad in fall of 1990, was the first to let the American people know that the Bush administration lied about Iraq’s alleged attempt to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. Wilson went to that country, investigated the structure of the uranium industry (which is mainly in French hands anyway), and concluded it was impossible. Bush and Cheney had believed a set of forged documents manufactured by a former employee of Italian military intelligence. (In the US, the only major public intellectual with close ties to Italian military intelligence is pro-war gadfly Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute).
In revenge, Rove tried to discredit Wilson and perhaps also punish him and his family. The purpose of such punishment is always to bully and terrorize other employees, as well as to shut up the whistleblower. Since the Bush administration has done so many illegal things, if Washington insiders started blowing the whistle, there could be a hundred Watergates. Rove let everyone in Washington know that he would destroy anyone who dared step forward. The White House also dealt with former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil when he blew the whistle on the Bush planning for and Iraq War in January of 2001 (look at the date). They threatened O’Neill with jail time for revealing classified information, even though O’Neill had never been given any. He subsequently fell quiet. It is also said that the Bushies tried to prevent Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, from getting any consulting gigs in Washington because he opposed the Iraq war.
But Rove’s revenge on Wilson was the ultimate. Plame was undercover as an employee of a phony energy company. She was actually investigating illegal proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. When Rove blew her cover to the US press, everyone who had ever been seen with her in Africa or Asia was put in extreme danger. It is said that some of her contacts may have been killed. Imagine the setback to the US struggle against weapons of mass destruction proliferation that this represents. Rove marched us off to Iraq, where there weren’t any. But he disrupted a major effort by the CIA to fight WMD that really did exist.