Digby - July 12, 2005

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

It was that rat bastard Cooper:

"By any definition, he burned Karl Rove," Luskin said of Cooper. "If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame."

Oooh. That's dangerous stuff there. It may not be the smartest thing in the world for Karl Rove's lawyer to be disparaging Matt Cooper on the day before he testifies, do you think? They only know what one e-mail says and they have no idea what Cooper is going to say. Bizarre.

Call Me Talk Radio

...only in print.

Atrios says that certain people remain concerned that corporate entities or politicans will infiltrate the web and pour big money into it to influence politics. As if the amount of money that MSNBC is flushing down the toilet each night on Tucker Carlson isn't pouring big money into television to influence politics. What, is Tucker an unbiased "journalist?"

Beat Me Hurt Me

For all those who are still breathless with appreciation at the White House press corpses performance yesterday, a commenter reminded me of this incident as an illustration of how the White House and the Press Corps normally interact. I remember writing about it at the time:

Focus

For the last couple of days I've been saying that the GOP's new excuse is that Karl Rove was just setting the record straight about that lyin' Joe Wilson. Deborah Orrin prattled about it last night on Hardball. Here are the official RNC talking points and my suggested answers::

My Bad

Bob Somerby takes John Aravosis and me to task today for some good reasons. He says:

Liberals and Dems simply can’t afford to play the dim games of the kooky-con right. But all across the liberal web, we find the virus spreading—a virus in which every bit of reasoning, no matter how daft, is accepted as seminal brilliance as long as it “proves” King Karl’s guilt. Yesterday, we were amazed when the sagacious Digby praised this post from John Aravosis:

"A" Game

In the same NY Times article refenced below, there's this:

"Knowing Rove, he's still having eight different policy meetings and sticking to his game plan," said one veteran Republican strategist in Washington who often works with the White House. "But this issue now is looming, and as they peel away another layer of the onion, there's a lot of consternation. Rove needs to be on his A game now, not huddled with lawyers and press people."

Dumb Defense #236

In today's NY Times piece, there's this, which I've heard bandied about quite a bit in the right blogosphere:

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

It is highly doubtful that the special prosecutor would convene a grand jury and investigate the White House for two years without first determining whether there was any potential crime to investigate since determining her status was the easiest element of the case --- finding out who did it and whether they knew she was undercover, which is obviously what he's been doing, is the difficult part.