The Monica-Scooter link

Let's not be coy here.  The link -- the commonality -- between Monica Goodling and Scooter Libby is one person in the White House who continues to avoid accountability.  Always standing behind the scrim is the same person who has converted the White House from president's office and residence, the center of statesmanship in American, to the hot and sweaty center of contemporary rightwing politics.  You know who I mean.

Almost every Wednesday afternoon, advisers to President Bush gather to strategize about putting his stamp on the federal courts and the United States attorneys’ offices. The group meets in the Roosevelt Room and includes aides to the White House counsel, the chief of staff, the attorney general and Karl Rove, who also sometimes attends himself. Each of them signs off on every nomination. Mr. Rove, a top adviser to the president, takes charge of the politics. As caretaker to the administration’s conservative allies, Mr. Rove relays their concerns, according to several participants in the Wednesday meetings...

Political advisers have had a hand in picking judges and prosecutors for decades, but Mr. Rove exercises unusually broad influence over political, policy and personnel decisions because of his closeness to the president, tenure in the administration and longstanding interest in turning the judiciary to the right

This is the same "top adviser to the president" who orchestrated the response to Joseph Wilson's statements on Iraq.  While Cheney went ballistic, Rove stayed behind an office door and orchestrated the skewering of  Wilson's family.  Libby took the fall.

When Karl Rove is obliged to respond, he consents to speak only where he can't be heard loudly and clearly and under oath by the victims of his political machinations -- the American people.  In the Wilson matter, a grand jury got to hear from him.  Maybe a few senators will get to hear from in the matter of the US attorneys -- maybe.

Senate Democrats and a few Republicans have called for Mr. Rove to testify publicly about the dismissals. “There is an issue of intrigue, and for better or worse, that surrounds Karl Rove,” said Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is in the president’s interest and the country’s interest to have it dispelled or verified, but let’s hear it from him.” The White House, however, is offering only a private interview without a sworn oath.

When he does emerge to speak publicly, the political machinery can be heard, grinding away in the background, by those who choose to listen carefully.  Always hidden in his words are prognostications of future administration actions, usually actions taken under a translucent cover.

In an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, he detailed accusations about Democratic abuses in several locations, including New Mexico and “the spectacle of Washington State.” He also relayed the complaints to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, and possibly Mr. Bush, the administration has recently acknowledged. The prosecutors in those two states, who have said they could not prove accusations of voter fraud, were among those ousted last year.

When you're a US Attorney during the Bush administration, pal, you come to the position with the understanding that it's being used as part of the White House political machinery.  From the moment you accept the job you'd better drop that "serving your country" fantasy and lay off singing "America the Beautiful" except when you're singing to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  And unless you're very sure of yourself (like Kyle Sampson), taking the 5th is probably the best bet.