[rface]

so how bad is it??? Did Limbaugh talk about this issue today - if so how much??

[hgro]

Does the Washington Post pass the smell test? Only with the Dimocrats in Congress.

[plain talk]

The Washington post wants to talk about smell?

[Mr. K]

The BIG story here is not that Plame was revealed by Rove, the story is that SHE was the one who sent HER HUSBAND to Nigeria to have tea and scones and claim that to be an 'investigation' into yellow cake Uranium.

She deserves to be fired for deliberately undermining the administration.

[Shermy]

This article is an interesting synopsis of other writers in the last pages.

Cooper's last minute story turns out to be an exaggeration - he had the same waiver from Rove as he had before. So, maybe he's trying to save face, or he plans only to talk about Rove. Could go back to the clink if he tries that.

[NutCrackerBoy]

It's weird how the comments on this thread are more or less the same as the ones when the "scandal" first broke.

I think my theory then was that someone in the Administration chain of command used a leak to play hardball - to discredit Wilson. Amidst people predicting the incident was meaningless and would soon blow over, I thought it had the makings to be kept alive as a "scandal" for a long time.

The components of the case lend themselves to the typical Democrat-water-carrying MSM distortion. Like the way they portray the GOP aide who found Democrat memos as having been in effect hacking their computers.

[Reactionary]

"There is no longer any question that top presidential adviser Karl Rove is a key player in the Valerie Plame case."

Really. How's that? The available information says that Rove was *a* source - and nowhere is it said that there weren't others. So how does that make him a "key player?"

"The latest news reports indicate that Rove is the source who Cooper was trying to protect until last week -- and that Rove tipped Cooper about Plame three days before Robert Novak published his now-famous column exposing Plame's identity."

No. The latest news reports indicate that Rove was *a* source. The latest reports do not "indicate that he was *the* source for anything. And the "latest reports" have absolutely nothing to say about whether or not Rove mentioned Plame's name, or for that matter if he even knew her name.

So, I guess we're left with the usual exaggerated nonsense from the Leftists in the news media.

[siunevada]

so how bad is it???

Nothing really new in this story. It's a re-hash.

It's not that bad. Rove didn't lay it all out for the Time, Inc. reporter, Cooper.

That's why his lawyer can say he didn't knowingly disclose any confidential information. Cooper may have already had the information when he interviewed Rove.

Of course, Lawrence O'Donnell will tell us it's all true and Rove is a scumbag to top it off and it's a major scoop for Lawrence O'Donnell. Apparently he is privy to the e-mails Cooper sent to his bosses that have been handed over to the grand jury. (I really doubt that. He just hates Rove.)

[cardinal4]

They dont have a thing. Read the email, if any thing, Rove is warning Cooper off. The left wanted a scandal, and they got it. Except just like all the other manufactured scandals, its backfiring on them.

[clintonh8r]

The only outing was of Joe Wilson as a smarmy little prick....

[HEY4QDEMS]

The fact that a reporter is going jail makes me positive that it is not Rove. He would never allow that to happen, he is the ultimate opposite of Clinton and Co.

[Brilliant]

A better question is does the media's position pass the smell test? Cooper spent the last 1-1/2 years resisting the production of these notes, and now he suddenly produces them to avoid jail, explaining that his "confidential" source did not object, and in fact, wanted him to disclose them.

[popdonnelly]

Hate to say it, but my guess is Rove will resign in the next day or so.

[quesney]

Don't know about whether Rove's position passes the smell's test. Today's White House briefing certainly didn't. It was pretty ugly. Not lookin' good for Rove.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050711-3.html

[Republican Red]

From NRO:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/

QUICK JOE WILSON BLEG [John Podhoretz]
Two years ago Joseph C. Wilson IV had a bio available online in which he mentioned his wife Valerie Plame's name. The bio has vanished. If anyone perchance saved it or a screenshot of it and can e-mail it to me, I'd be grateful. (PS: It's now 4:15 pm EDT. If you don't do it by 4:30, don't bother.)

ENOUGH JOE WILSON! [John Podhoretz]
Thanks, everybody, for the multiple copies of his bio. Check out the NYPost tomorrow for my use of it...
04:40 PM

[JennysCool]

It's just hilarious how, when there's nothing much to bash Bush about currently, the MSM always goes back to the old stuff (Plame, Abu Ghraib) to see if any more mileage can be gotten out of it. Whatta buncha dorks.

[cyncooper]

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the administration critic that White House was eager to discredit at the time.

I guess it would kill the media to point out Wilson was lying so discredited himself. The extent of revealing Plame's role (and I doubt Rove was the first down the pike to refer to it---my guess is he got it from yet another reporter) is illumination, not retaliation.

Wilson IS discredited.

The media constantly acts like the WH sought to unfairly cast the man with a taint when that's just the way he was.

· President Bush and press secretary Scott McClellan's denials that Rove was involved in the Plame matter

I heard Jeff Birnbaum state this, too. It's a flat out lie. Bush and McClellan and Rove never denied Rove was "involved" in the Plame matter. NEVER. It has always been openly stated that Rove dealt with the aftermath of Wilson's op-ed and he did not "out" Plame.

[surely_you_jest]

Does it pass the smell test? That depends on who is doing the sniffing.

How bad is it? It could be worse. This could be coming up sometime other than the middle of the summer - the "silly season" - when the press reports about kids, and summer, the beach, people frying eggs on sidewalks, watermelons, sharks, etc., are not happening

Beyond that, though, there are a couple of things here that really are not good at all.

First, there is the fact that this is beginning to smell like a Klintoonesque reverie on what the meaning of "is" is. Too much parsing. Too soon after Klintoon.

Second, even though we like Mr Rove, and what he has done over the years for President Bush, he has become the center of attention and not President Bush, who is supposed to be the center of attention. This means, regrettably, that Mr Rove has failed in his primary duty - he has become visible, and taken the spotlight off of the Presidents agenda for this, his final, term in office.

Third, there is the possibility here of technical violations of obscure statutory law of which we are currently unaware. Or, at least, the possibility of an allegation of a violation of some obscure statute, of which we are currently unaware. This provides grist for the journalistic mill. Which keeps this alive. Which means that it creates a smell. And if there really is some violation or other, however obscure, this will be a serious problem after Labor Day when people begin to actually pay attention. In which case we go beyond "smell" to "stench". And "stench" is something with which we cannot live.

Fourth, and perhaps most significant - what does this distraction do to the rest of President Bush's agenda? We don't have a lot of time left, folks, to actually get things done. There is this fall, which will be more or less consumed by a Supreme Court confirmation. And that assumes there will only be one. If there is more than one, this could spread over into '06. Half of '06 will be consumed by the Congressional mid-term politicking. Then there is election season '06. Part of '07 will be taken up by a new Congress figuring out where the rest rooms are located. Most of '08 will be consumed by Presidential and Congressional primaries and actual campaigns.

My point is this - from now until early spring of next year is "prime time" for the President to get things done. We don't need a lot of high-visibility distractions between now and then. Particularly as relates to the Presidents primary on-scene day-to-day political adviser.

[DallasMike]

The mainstream liberals surpass the kookiness of the most extreme Clinton-haters in the 1990s. Does anyone really think that left-wing journalists are going to go to jail to protect Karl Rove?

Further, the Washington Post must be smoking some pretty strong crack if they believe that Cooper's e-mail implicates Karl Rove. In fact, it's the clearest evidence yet that Rove was not the leaker. The first line of the e-mail indicates that Cooper already had his topic -- Plame's role in authorizing her husband's trip to Niger -- before the conversation even began. Cooper wanted to know what Karl Rove knew about the already-established topic. Thus, if Karl Rove was the leaker of the information, he didn't leak it to Plame.

-Michael McCullough (aka "DallasMike")