Your Rove

So, Bush, you will have already noticed a new look this morning. It's something I have been meaning to do for the past week, but have been too busy to take care of--what with that trip to Las Vegas and attendant preparations. I'm also, sadly, not savvy enough myself on the technical front to be able to do these housekeeping chores myself, so I had to find someone to help me.

Anyway, there it is, in all its glory: the cover of our book (and a link for those who might wish to purchase it!) As I think I may have mentioned, it was designed by my friend Jeff Koegel, an artist who is a regular at one of the artist forums that Ellie and I host here at our house. I think he has done a terrific job on the cover: it makes for a distinctive look, and one that makes an immediate impression--with a hint of humor, a bit of smart aesthetic irony in its reference to the late Andy Warhol and a couple of other, more recent art contemporaries, and of course its relevance to what we're all about. What do you think?

Well, back to our sheep as the French say. Your Rove. I suspect he's been doing his own little celebration dance since the announcement that he will not face indictment from Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. You aid yourself this morning, at your press conference, that you breathed "a sigh of relief when [Fitzgerald] made the decision he made." Well and good. The problem is, we're still left in the dark out here. Somebody--or bodies--in your White House gang was the source of the leak that outed Joe Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, in an act of pure political revenge for his op-ed piece in the NY Times exposing your State of the Union lie about that non-existent yellowcake from Niger.

My own guess, frankly, is that Fitzgerald simply couldn't find sufficient evidence to include Rove in his indictment. Okay, so it's just a guess. But I find it hard to believe that your Rove, of all people, was not included in the circle that made this despicable decision, along with Cheney and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby--the only one the prosecutor seems to have been able to nail in his investigation to date.

Here's the thing, though. We ought to know. You talk glibly in public, as you lecture other countries, about the "transparency" of your administration while that same administration remains the most opaque in living memory. You said it again this very morning: "Ours is a transparent society," you said with a straight face; and "people will be held to account according to our laws."

Beyond the legality, there's also a moral question here. And a question of managing authority. It seems to me, Bush, that as the man responsible for the affairs of the White House, you yourself should be demanding answers and taking the action that you promised us a while ago--to root out leakers and send them packing. I would expect you, a self-professedly righteous and morally courageous man, to be outraged by so cowardly and treacherous an act. Unless, of course, as we're left to suspect, you already know the answers and don't want them known because of the damage they might do.

In any event, it seems your Rove is off the hook for now, and you persist in fending off any and all questions (again this morning!)under the convenient umbrella of the "ongoing investigation." Meantime, Rove is free once again to pursue his nefarious political career and vent his venom, as he did again yesterday, first chance he got, on Democrats: he targeted Kerry and Murtha as "profoundly wrong" on the Iraq war and accused them, falsely, of advocating a course to "cut and run--as Democrats, he could not resist insinuating, always do.

It doesn't matter to Rove, I guess, that neither one of them actually took the position he imputes to them. The only thing that matters, as with your Delay, is to win elections for right-wing Republicans, and to crush all opposition along the way. A sad state of affairs.