Since everyone is quoting ABC News: The Note today, even those who avoid it, I figured I'd pass along what I thought was the salient passage.

For the average American, it is unseemly for the president's senior adviser, using inside information, to discredit enemies of the president anonymously.  [my emphasis -- ed.]

Even some of the more rational righties want us to give Karl Rove a break, and if we can't prove a crime, (beyond a reasonable fucking doubt to be sure) we should just leave him alone to help Bush with the "Hard Work" of Prez-Nit-Witting.   Predictably, others are either spouting Ken Melman's talking points, some are minimizing the implications of the story, blaming liberals, or simply blaming the press.

How about blaming the slug who is actually to blame?

Sorry, I'm still fresh with the sting of learning that the definition of the word "is" can be all that keeps a presidential administration afloat.   I can't help but remind everyone that it was none other than President Bush, "who told staffers on their first day in the White House to avoid any appearance of impropriety," the first time one of Rove's ethical lapses came to our attention.  The prior avoidance of the issue, and the current stonewalling are frighteningly close to a cover-up.   And you know how a cover-up just pisses everyone off.

It is likewise unseemly to put the President in the position of defending his closest adviser (and the whole GOP Apparachik) once again -- especially when they were violating orders.  What is it with these guys?

Professor Reynolds has blamed ethics violations, and the witch hunts which follow them as one of the things destroying America in his tome The Appearance of Impropriety. (Yes, the insta-linker can actually put together 288 pages of coherent thought.) 

We demand that judges avoid the appearance of impropriety, insist the same of regulators,  make it a punishable offense in the awarding government contracts, and warn corporations that they may be subject to civil if not criminal liability if it even appears that they aren't acting completely above board.  Hell, even court reporters are required to adhere to a higher duty of professional behavior -- not to mention us lawyers who, like President Clinton, can be disbarred for activities which fall well short of the criminal action that Rove may very well have (even unintentionally) committed.  

Go ahead and split the hair on the mens rea of "knowingly" and I'll discuss perjury and criminal conspiracy with you if you'd like.  Rove is smarm and it is embarrassing at best that he is Bush's Brain.  Bush should be pissed, and at Rove, nobody else (except the others who were also involved like Cheney's boy, Libby. and our old friend from the Iran-Contra mess, Elliot Abrams.)

Meanwhile . . .

While watching Scotty McManiquin "dissasemble" and dance some more today during the gaggle, the subject (to Scott's relief, at least for one question) changed from Rove to the War.

I couldn't help look up from my keyboard and yelp, "What the F@#$ ???????!!!!!!!!!!"

According to the White House it was Terrorists?  It was the Terrorists who CHOSE to make Iraq the central front on the WoT??  Not us, there was no flypaper theory, we did not respond to 9/11 "at a time and place of our choosing."  We were forced to go to Iraq because the Terrorists picked the place to fight.

Will the fucking lies never end?