All Roads Lead To Rove

Karl Rove, the President's insanely happy chief advisor, a man whom Bush calls "Turd Blossom" because he can make poop look good, is getting more and more fingers pointed at him these days.

First there was the Valerie Plame trial and its uncontroverted testimony that Karl Rove had outed a CIA agent to cover administration lies. Not the CIA's idea of how to serve the nation, one would think. So far, he's gotten away with it. He still has his security clearance. But his actions were transparently against the law, and sooner or later he will need to reconcile his life with this past.

Now it appears that Mr. Rove may also have been exerting influence inappropriate for a Presidential advisor over at the Justice Department. There, Attorney General Gonzales delegated to two junior staffers, Monica Goodling and Kyle Thompson, the task of hiring and firing U.S. Attorneys. Mr. Rove appears to have guided their work from the White House. Republicans got appointments, Democrats and Independents did not. That is illegal.

The White House has managed to lose Mr. Rove's firing-related e-mail. Congress has subpoenaed the Justice Department for their copies. Just as every stick has two ends, every email has two copies. At least two.

Rove also tried to involve staff in fifteen different departments of the government in supporting Republican election candidates. That's definitely not what they're there for. If he also involved them in hiring based on peoples' political preferences, he may have been party to more crime.


Republicans who come up for re-election in 2008 are distancing themselves from the Bush debacle and becoming independents. Contributions can go to them directly. Money sent to the Republican Party will more and more go toward legal defense as the scandals unfold. That giving will be a contribution to defend what the party has been, not a gift toward any future.

Also, democrats are taking their donors.


A certain Ms. Palfrey, provider of feminine charmers for a fee, with the help of ABC News has disclosed that the head of U.S AID, Randall Tobias, availed himself of her services, even as he

"...oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath." "

This man needs the gift of moral insight. May God so grant.


The 2004 Ohio presidential vote - the one that put Bush over the top - is beginning to look very suspicious.

"On the night of 2-3 November, 2004, the computer designated to count Ohio votes was cut out of the loop. Its web address was diverted to a private company in Chattanooga, TN, named SMARTech.

It’s easy to ‘impersonate’ someone else’s website. This is a common ruse used in conjunction with emails that ‘phish’ for your financial information. But such scams can be detected by inspecting the address bar at the top of most browsers. For example, the screen may look just like Washington Mutual’s login for bank customers, but the address is not http://WaMu.com, but instead points to a site (in India!) labeled only as http://202.71.146.148/.s/.wamusk/index.php.

The web redirection on Election Night of 2004 went a step beyond this: Not only did the official website of the Ohio Department of State look just right, but it had the right address: http://election.sos.state.oh.us. Any citizen or press service looking for real time election results from the state of Ohio would have been directed here. In every sense, this SMARTech site became the official vote tabulation for the state of Ohio.

If the name SMARTech sounds vaguely familiar, it is because the same web server, run by the same company, was in the news last month. It is the site that handled the email accounts for White House aides who did not want their communications to be subject to Congressional scrutiny."

If this is so, then the legitimacy of Bush's election is undone. He truly is merely the man who occupies the office of the President. He knows it, and he knows that we know it.


Meanwhile, Congress has discovered that it can put reluctant witnesses in jail. It has in its rules a rarely-used power to hold witnesses guilty of inherent contempt for refusing subpoenas. Mr. Gonzales is not the sole enforcer of the law.

He could resign. But any appointee who resigns under Congressional fire will need to be replaced under Congressional scrutiny. Mr. Bush has apparently decided to go with the staff he's got, rather than the staff that might help him get beyond his present predicament. So Gonzales will stay. For now.

If one is following the path that God has ordained, then, some think, one need not fear failure. God will not allow it. If God be for us, who can be against us? Therefore, consider not failure! Such souls could remember, though, that God will provide difficult moments sufficient for one's own enlightenment.