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Sic him! The New York Times goes after Karl Rove.

It's beginning to look as though a kind of exorcism may be in the offing. 

Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove.

The New York Times' lead editorial is devoted to the necessity of a full investigation of Karl Rove:  for his role in the US attorneys' dismissal, for Plame... in short for everything immoral, un-American, biased, cruel, authoritarian, and corrupt coming out of the Bush administration.

This was, perhaps, the inevitable result of taking the chief operative of a presidential campaign, one famous for his scorched-earth style, and ensconcing him in the White House — not in a political role, but as a key player in the formation of policy. Mr. Rove never had to submit to Senate confirmation hearings. Yet, from the very start, photographs of cabinet meetings showed him in the background, keeping an enforcer’s eye on the proceedings. After his re-election in 2004, President Bush formally put Mr. Rove in charge of all domestic policy.

In that position, as David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg reported in The Times, Mr. Rove took a lead role in selecting federal judges and the hiring — and firing — of United States attorneys. Mr. Rove’s staff maneuvered to fire the prosecutor in Arkansas and replace him with a Rove protégé, and also seems to have been involved in the firing of a United States attorney in New Mexico who refused to file what he considered to be baseless charges of election fraud against Democrats.

Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.

This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.

The next step Congress will be taking is to give Rove the scrutiny -- under oath and in full view -- that he  should have had from the start, given the power he has been able to wield.

The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.

What Elizabeth Edwards has done.

There are no euphemisms or equivocations in her language. There’s no apologizing by either Edwards for the raw political calculus of their campaign plans. There’s no sentimental public hand-wringing about the possible effect her choice might have on her children. The unpatronizing Mrs. Edwards sounds like an adult speaking to adults. Americans understood.

Until I saw how Frank Rich's op-ed piece for tomorrow's New York Times has been titled -- "Elizabeth Edwards for President" -- I hadn't put my finger on just quite what Elizabeth Edwards has revealed about all of us.

Well, the John and Elizabeth Edwards press conference has revealed two things:  first that she has been recognized as fully ready for the White House in a way that no other current candidate I can think of has, and that mainstream media with very few exceptions have lost the public.  The public applauds  Elizabeth Edwards for her authenticity and courage; the media carp.

Nothing has shown the distance between the public and media as clearly as the reaction to that press conference.

Others who muse on politics for a living responded with bafflement and implicit moral condemnation — and I don’t mean just Rush Limbaugh, who ridiculed the Edwardses for dedicating themselves to their campaign instead of, as he would have it, “to God.”

No less ludicrous were those pundits who presumed to bestow their own wisdom upon the Edwards household as it confronted terminal illness. A Washington correspondent for Time (a man) fretted that “Edwards’s supporters, and surely many average Americans” will be wondering when his “duties as a husband and a father” will “trump his duty to his country and the cause of winning the White House.” (Oh those benighted “average” Americans!) A former Los Angeles Times reporter (a woman) who covered the 2004 Edwards campaign suggested to USA Today that “this is a time when they would want to be home together savoring every moment that they’ve got.” A Washington Post columnist, identifying herself as a fellow mother, faulted Mrs. Edwards for not being sufficiently protective of her children.

Now look at what Frank Rich and most of us see in Elizabeth Edwards and then, if you will, compare her qualities with those of, say, President George W. Bush.  "She comes across as honest, smart and unpretentious," Rich writes and adds that for all the talk about truth and authenticity in the press, media go "nuts" when either actually turns up in our political life.

The unpatronizing Mrs. Edwards sounds like an adult speaking to adults. Americans understood. A CBS News poll found that by more than two to one, both women and men support the decision to move forward. So do prominent cancer survivors in the media establishment, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum... The more Elizabeth Edwards is in the spotlight, the more everyone else in the arena will have to be judged against her.  Next to her stark humanity, the slick playacting that passes for being “human” and “folksy” in a campaign is tinny. Though much has been said about how she is a model to others battling cancer, she is also a model (or should be) of personal transparency to everyone else in the presidential race. [emphasis added]

Rich is not a John Edwards supporter -- not so far, anyway:  "For me, the jury on that question is out." 

Nor, evidently, is he a big fan of Hillary Clinton -- about whom he writes:

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign “conversations” with the public have not stooped to the level of Mr. McCain’s fictions. But they have been laced with the cautious constructions that make her stabs at spontaneity seem as contrived as her rigidly controlled Web “chats.” 

But I think he might vote for Elizabeth Edwards if given the chance.

Indeed, of all the reasons to applaud Elizabeth Edwards’s decision to stay in politics, the most important may be her insistence, by her very action, that we not compartmentalize the harsh reality of death and the imperatives of public policy, both at home and at war. Let the real conversation begin.

And may her influence on her husband and on all of us continue for many years.

An old ally of Bush turns against the administration

“I really like him, which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things,” he said.  He added, “I think he’s become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.”

In speaking out, Mr. Dowd became the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.

Matthew Dowd was a strong admirer of George W. Bush describes his disillusionment to Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times in Bush's home ground in Austin where Dowd, a former Democrat, worked for Bush as part of the "brain trust," as strategist, and as someone who was good at interpreting polls.  But now he sees Bush as isolated, divisive and wrong -- dead wrong -- about the war.

He said he came to believe Mr. Bush’s views were hardening, with the reinforcement of his inner circle. But, he said, the person “who is ultimately responsible is the president.” And he gradually ventured out with criticism, going so far as declaring last month in a short essay in Texas Monthly magazine that Mr. Bush was losing “his gut-level bond with the American people,” and breaking more fully in this week’s interview.

“If the American public says they’re done with something, our leaders have to understand what they want,” Mr. Dowd said. “They’re saying ‘Get out of Iraq.’ ”

Dowd, who often sounds naive and shallow, probably indulged in wishful thinking about Bush's "gut-level bond with the American people."  But he's right about the isolation and its partner, the hardening of views.
I'd want to ask Dowd what took him so long.

He said he clung to the hope that Mr. Bush would get back to his Texas style of governing if he won. But he saw no change after the 2004 victory. 

Texas style of governing?  Wait a minute!  Would that include admiration of Bush's handling of death row appeals -- one of the more shocking aspects of Bush's governorship and of his relationship with Alberto Gonzalez?

I just come back to thinking this ex-admirer of George W. Bush is and always has been, well, naive and shallow at best. I can't shake my disgust that from the Florida-2000 bully tactics through Iraq and Katrina and even now in many ways, this guy remains personally loyal to Bush-- loyal, of course, in the new 21st century meaning of the word!

It's okay if we use the word, but if others use it we treat it as an insult

US diplomatic officials have been scrambling to contain the damage done by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia when he addressed the Arab League and complained of the "illegitimate" American "occupation" of Iraq. They now have a new headache! Iraqi President Jalal Talabani agrees with King Abdullah! The generally pro-American Talabani, a major Kurdish leader as well, admitted that the US presence had turned into a ruinous occupation for his country, when his turn came to address Arab League delegates.

The controversy is a little silly. As Al-Jeeran.Net notes, US officials have in the past repeatedly admitted that under international law their troops in Iraq fall into the category of occupation forces. ...Juan Cole, at Informed Comment.

And here's another slap in the face for surgistas:

The now widely discussed Lancet study of Iraqi "excess deaths" between the invasion of March 2003 and June 2006 offered an estimated figure of 655,000. Its careful, door-to-door methodology was vehemently rejected by both George Bush (not "a credible report") and Tony Blair. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, however, recently obtained British government documents indicate that the study's methodology was indeed sound. ("[T]he chief scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as ‘robust' and ‘close to best practice'… In another document, a government official -- whose name has been blanked out -- said ‘the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.'")  ...Mike Davis at Tomdispatch.

Another instance of "not quite what it seems to be" at the Department of Justice

The committee struck a deal last night for the testimony of eight Justice Department officials, Goodling among them. Goodling's letter was nearly identical to an earlier letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. But there was one interesting detail in the letter...

Paul Kiel at Muckraker has the story:

..."Ms. Goodling remains actively employed by the Department of Justice, though she is temporarily and voluntarily using some of her accrued leave time," John Dowd, Goodling's lawyer, writes [my emphasis].

So just to be clear: the departure from the Justice Department of the two aides (Goodling and Kyle Sampson) at the center of the U.S. attorney firings has lent the appearance that they were called to task. But that's not at all true. Sampson left voluntarily, even remaining on the payroll for a number of days after he resigned -- until questions were raised. And Goodling hasn't really left at all. And, despite having pled the Fifth, she apparently plans to return to her job as if nothing ever happened.

"The dotted lines all lead to Karl Rove."

The Democratic Congress is flexing its muscles, no doubt about it, and beyond Gonzales, Halliburton, Niger yellowcake, there's always Karl Rove. 

Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and former counselor to President Clinton, said he believes in the importance of protecting executive privilege, but that Bush can't use it "as a shield to protect 1,100 White House employees from all forms of accountability. Not under oath? With no transcript? That's a cocktail party, that's not an investigation."

Careful, guys!  Wouldn't want to trot out there looking for the rattlesnake wearing nothing but your gardening gloves.

Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service, said the Democrats' takeover of Congress, combined with Bush's waning power and the administration's exceptionally centralized control of federal agencies had created a tinderbox for Rove.

"Especially if you lose a midterm election and start running into strong-willed Democrats who want to do aggressive oversight in advance of a presidential election," Light said. "The dotted lines all lead to Karl Rove."

Indeed.  But be careful.  In trying to simplify the battle, you may miss a battalion of well-armed, carefully protected enemies -- among whom are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and a host of corporate and other supporters.

NB:  A wiggly dotted line connecting Randy "Duke" Cunningham with Dick Cheney can be found here.