IT'S NO SECRET

This is funny!

In spite of increasing evidence that points to the exoneration of Karl Rove, the New York Times has not let up on their crusade to have him fired and embarrass President Bush.

The big story:

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

Oh my God! Rove said, "I heard that, too."

After being told by other journalists, not government sources, that Valerie Plame was a CIA employee, Rove told Novak that he, too, had heard something about Wilson's wife working for the CIA.

The Times could not be more shameless in their partisan spin.

The conversation between Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove seemed almost certain to intensify the question about whether one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers played a role in what appeared to be an effort to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility after he challenged the veracity of a key point in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, saying Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear fuel in Africa.

Intensify? Maybe, but only in the funhouse mirrored world of the Radical Left.

The conversation seems almost certain to expose all those who've convicted Rove of a crime and demanded that Bush fire him to look like fools.

Paul Krugman has a piece in today's Times that can only be described as clinically delusional.

Krugman writes:

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

... Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant.

Speaking of facts being irrelevant, Krugman is dismissing all that has been learned regarding Rove's role in the Valerie Plame matter.

Damn the facts!

...And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage.

Krugman conveniently seems to be forgetting that Rove did not initiate the discussions of Plame. He was not on a smear campaign to discredit Wilson. Rove was not part of any orchestrated effort to smear him. Wilson lied and discredited himself on a number of occasions with no assistance from Rove.

Krugman's claim that our national security was damaged by Rove's "I heard that, too" is indicative of how completely unhinged he is.

How does acknowledging the identity of a woman that openly worked for more than five years at the CIA agency's headquarters in Langley jeopardize our national security?

Read what Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, has to say about Plame's status in theWashington Times.

...One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

Excuse me, but questions about what Rove said are not irrelevant at all. The answers are the crux of the matter.

It's not about allegiance to the party line. It's about an examination of the facts and the realization that Rove did not set out to ruin Plame's career or undermine our national security in any way.

Krugman calls Rove a "thug" and blames Bush for not making the Plame case a priority and abandoning the serious issues facing our country in order to find the source of the leak.

Is he serious? He thinks Bush should be faulted, even though a special prosecutor was assigned to investigate.

Right.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that it's an imaginary leak in the first place. Plame was not a covert agent at the time Novak wrote his column. Wilson said so.

It's ironic that Krugman ponders how our political system got to this point.

To understand, he should look in the mirror.